2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report - HubSpot

Inbound marketing not only has staying power, it’s growing. It has proven itself to be much more than the next shiny technology or the latest buzzword. The research shows that nearly 60% of marketers
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Inbound marketing not only has staying power, it’s growing. It has proven itself to be much more than the next shiny technology or the latest buzzword. The research shows that nearly 60% of marketers have adopted inbound marketing strategies and more than 80% of those executing inbound marketing have integrated it into broader company goals. People are also investing more in inbound, as budgets for this strategy have grown nearly 50% in each of the past three years.

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IntroductionLetter from the authorWelcome to HubSpot’s fifth annual State of Inbound Marketing Report.At HubSpot, our founding mission is to transform the way people do marketing. The traditionalmethods of reaching people through interruptive and annoying tactics are disappearing – andthose that aren’t are becoming increasingly expensive and ineffective. Further, these high-pressure tactics are counterproductive to building long-term relationships with customers.We also believe that engaging consumers means much more than simply finding the newestchannel to push out a message to the masses. Instead, marketing today is aboutunderstanding how consumers research and make purchase decisions in this hyper-connected,digital world. It’s about meeting them at every stage of that decision by integrating relevant contentwith context on your consumers. It’s about a unified process of attracting audience, convertingprospects, closing leads, and delighting customers in ways they actually desire.It’s about creating marketing people love: inbound marketing.While we at HubSpot have strong opinions about inbound, every year for the past five years, we’veturned to our larger marketing community to share insights on what inbound marketing means totheir companies. The research seeks to uncover marketers’ perspectives on everything from whatinbound marketing is to how (or if) they use inbound strategies to the budgets and resourcesthey’re dedicating to inbound marketing.And here’s what we learned: Inbound marketing not only has staying power, it’s growing. It hasproven itself to be much more than the next shiny technology or the latest buzzword. The researchshows that nearly 60% of marketers have adopted inbound marketing strategies and more than80% of those executing inbound marketing have integrated it into broader company goals. Peopleare also investing more in inbound, as budgets for this strategy have grown nearly 50% in each ofthe past three years.What’s exciting to all of us at HubSpot is that marketers today understand that inbound is not just aset of tactics but an ideology and framework for how businesses will find customers in the nextdecade.The 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report looks to tease out how the industry has evolved overthe past five years and highlight opportunities we still have for growth. It includes insight from over3,300 executives, business owners and marketers on every continent on the globe, just 9% ofwhich were HubSpot customers. We delve into executive strategic vision for inbound marketing,make the business for adopting an inbound philosophy, review specific tactics by channel, anddetail how to build an industry leading inbound team.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report

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As inbound marketing continues to mature, marketers will continue to innovate. And we’re excitedto be a part of this remarkable industry. If you haven’t already embarked with us, we invite you tojoin our community and help us innovate even further. If you’re already an inbound marketer, beproud – you’re helping transform the world through your work.For the love of marketing,Meghan Lockwood2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report

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Top 10 lessons from the 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report1. Inbound is real, and it shows remarkable traction for such a new industry: While inboundmarketing is a relatively new industry, it shows sizeable market share and impressivebudget growth rates.• Sixty percent of companies will execute inbound marketing strategies in 2013• Marketers allocate 34% of their overall budgets to inbound tactics – 11% more than theydedicate to outbound strategies, like banners, direct mail, and more.• This year, 48% of marketers plan to increase their inbound marketing spending – thethird year in a row that inbound budgets are increasing at a near 50% pace.2. Inbound also delivers on its ROI promises, providing more and cheaper leads thatconvert at higher rates: Twice as many marketers say inbound marketing delivers belowaverage cost per leads versus outbound strategies. Our survey found that 34% of all theleads generated in 2013 come from inbound marketing sources. In fact, inbound delivers54% more leads into the marketing funnel than traditional outbound leads.In 2013, 41% of marketers confirm inbound produces measurable ROI, and a staggering82% of marketers who blog see positive ROI for their inbound marketing.Inbound leads also deliver superior cost per lead and cost per customer. In fact, U.S.inbound marketers spending more than $25K per year save an average of 13% in overallcost per lead and more than $14 dollars for every new customer acquired versus thoserelying on outbound strategies.3. Traditional marketing is fading: While traditional marketing models have not completelydried up, we found they are dramatically devalued by all marketers in 2013. Seventeenpercent of marketers say both traditional advertising and direct mail have become lessimportant in the past six months. Traditional advertising and PPC will deliver the leastamount of leads for marketers this year, with just 6% originating from each of thesecategories.4. We need to better define what inbound marketing is – and how to measure certainactivities: According to our survey results, the industry could benefit from clarification.Some marketers were unsure how to define “inbound marketing.” While the rapid growthwe have witnessed to date is impressive - 60% of marketers have currently adoptedinbound strategies – there is still room for education, as an additional 19% of marketers areunsure whether to characterize their marketing activities as “inbound.” As the industrymatures, and more marketers become educated on the inbound methodology, we expectthis confusion to abate.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report

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Similarly, how we report and analyze inbound results has some room for improvement.Some marketers are clearly dedicated to tracking the “hard numbers,” with 15% tying theirinbound results directly to revenue or customers/wins generated. Still, a surprising 34% ofbusinesses cannot or do not calculate overall inbound ROI in 2013. Among executives,tracking the ROI in analytics becomes even more important, with 20% of these executivespointing to the need to develop analytics further.5. As a holistic approach, inbound helps target a fragmented digital audience and makemarketing more profitable: Marketers who have embraced inbound recognize thatsuccess depends on shifting overall marketing’s focus – and weaving inbound’s content-rich, customer-focused strategy through your business practices. The inbound paradigmgets your company working together, rather than looking at a lead as a baton to hand offfrom one functional group to another.Inbound marketers also address the fact that consumers’ behavior, which is oftenfragmented, distracted, and over-stimulated with alerts and content, necessitates tyingthings together. The web means you can’t lead someone down your funnel step by step.Your customer controls their own interaction with your online material – a prospectengages with you on their own timetable. One person may look at your site at 10 a.m. everymorning, while another will visit only after an email has captured their attention. To besuccessful at inbound, you need to align your team to be ready and to measure it alltogether.This clear alignment of inbound goals makes marketing more profitable. Our survey foundthe following:• Companies that establish shared marketing and sales responsibilities see clearimprovements in their lead acquisition costs, particularly among enterprise firms.Adopting a marketing-sales agreement saves companies with more than 200employees an average of $195.84 total cost per customer.• Inbound concepts boost website conversions: Inbound marketers double theaverage site conversion rate of non-inbound marketers, from 6% to 12% total.Marketers see an average website conversion rate of 10% industry-wide.• Testing inbound efforts drives major ROI improvements: Companies who test are75% more likely to show ROI for inbound marketing than those who fail to test theirstrategies.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report

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In 2013, marketers generally embrace the goal of integrating inbound strategies with largermarketing goals, with 81% of companies reporting some level of this integration. However,executives and sales teams still dont quite buy in to inbound marketing. When it comes toallocating resources to support inbound efforts, only 11% of company executives and 17% ofsales teams lend their full support.6. Inbound has shifted where marketers spend time, and automation helps them worksmarter: Some marketers considering inbound shy away from full-scale adoption due tothe perception that inbound marketing is a lot of work. It’s true that to succeed at inbound,you need to commit to the principles. But inbound’s relative time commitment is not all thatdifferent from that of traditional methods – inbound just shifts where companies will spendtheir time. Inbound requires more up-front work, but it results in less time that a sales teamwill chase tepid, low converting leads. Companies with aggressive growth goals also don’thave the time to call a list that converts at less than 2%.According to the 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Survey, inbound produces resource-efficient leads. For instance, 43% of marketers generated a customer via their blog thisyear, though the blog requires roughly 9% of marketers’ total full-time staff dedications andjust 7% of their total budget. This means that marketers spend 55% more time than budgeton blogging.7. Inbound marketing is not a channel or a technology, it’s a strategy: It’s not enough to“do” inbound. To see real results, you need to deeply commit to the model and optimizecontinually. Marketers that succeed with inbound marketing dedicate a high level of time,commitment, and resources to getting it right. Inbound marketing is not a quick-fix, nor willyour company succeed at inbound by hiring an “inbound expert” and sitting them next toyour email, trade show, and website staff member. Successful inbound execution requiresa strategic change in how you focus your end-to-end marketing practices, such as buildingand staying true to your core customer personas and relentlessly tracking your lead gengoals.This dedication produces dramatic results. Seventy-nine percent of companies who have ablog report a positive ROI for inbound marketing this year, compared with just 20% of thosecompanies that do not have a blog. In fact, 82% of marketers who blog on a daily basisacquired a customer using their blog, as opposed to 57% of marketers who just blogmonthly – still an impressive statistic!8. It’s a good time to be a customer: Coupled with an inbound methodology is theemergence of the customer-centric company. In 2013, it’s not just that “the customer isalways right”; according to inbound marketing principles, the customer is the beginningand the end of the equation. Foretelling this shift, 50% of our 2013 survey respondentsindicate that they consider their companies to be primarily customer-focused and nearly2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report

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25% of marketers cite reaching the right audience as their top priority for 2013. After all,great marketers have always started with an understanding of their consumers. Now morethan ever, it starts and ends with that understanding.9. It’s also a great time – if a potentially exhausting one – to be an inbound marketer: Ingeneral, inbound marketers are working on very small teams. Fifty-one percent of allinbound teams contain fewer than six people. This small team environment is pervasive atevery level of the industry; even at the enterprise level, 31% of marketing teams contain fiveor fewer full-time employees.Marketers are keenly aware of this resource shortage, and they report the need to hiremore inbound marketers to support growth. While marketing teams will begin 2013 with anaverage five or fewer people, most will at least double by the end of the year. Inboundmarketers plan to hire an average of 9.3 people this year, which is 125% more growth thanteams not executing inbound marketing. Enterprise companies expect the most growth,expressing plans to hire an average 18.6 full-time marketers this year.10. Content is a critical, but not standalone, inbound marketing component: Despite thewealth of recent articles heralding the rise of content produced for marketing, ourresearch shows that only 18% of marketers are purely focused on developing qualitycontent in 2013. Finding and converting quality leads and identifying the right audiencerank more important in terms of marketers’ overall priorities.There is evidence supporting the fact that marketers are committed to developing content-rich strategies and understand the critical role that content plays – in fact, 10% dedicate atleast one full-time team member to developing content, and 9% have either a full-time SEOexpert or blog lead. But the data shows that “content marketing” is not quite the panaceasome in the industry claim. Rather, content created and distributed by marketers must tie incontext on customers, from how they interact with your channels to CRM information topersonalized, dynamic targeting and beyond. This approach of “content plus context”helps inbound marketers truly delight consumers and generate more business.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report

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What is inbound marketing?Inbound marketing is a holistic, data-driven strategy that involves attracting and converting visitorsinto customers through personalized, relevant information and content –- not interruptivemessages – and following them through the sales experience with ongoing engagement.Over the past five years, marketers have witnessed a tectonic shift in strategy, from campaign-based interruption marketing, to a consistently measured, closed-loop inbound marketing strategy– one that pulls interested customers to your company and creates lasting relationships.A Note on Channel DistinctionsThere are digital marketing tactics that are specifically designed as “inbound marketing” and thosethat are not. While it’s easy to explain why direct mail and PPC banner ads are “outbound,” it ismore complicated to define more flexible online strategies as purely inbound versus outbound. AtHubSpot, we see the distinguishing factor as how people are using a specific channel more thanthe definition of the channel itself. In the simplest sense, it’s about consumer choice.For example, depending on how it is deployed, the email channel often can be considered eitherinbound or outbound. One-off, campaign-based, tactical email sends are nearly always bucketedas outbound, because they aim to interrupt people’s inboxes. However, as a part of an opt-in,nurturing strategy, email is a terrific complement to other inbound techniques. Similarly, if you wereto simply send out 200 tweets a day announcing a “new special,” you wouldn’t really be doinginbound marketing2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report

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CHAPTER 1 ARE YOU INBOUND?Executive Insights on Inbound MarketingIn this chapter, we explore which operational groups have bought into inboundmarketing strategies, and which teams remain stumbling blocks on the path to fullcompany-wide adoption of an inbound marketing philosophy.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 1

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Chapter One Table of Contents1. Is inbound mandatory?Marketing’s Adoption of Inbound Strategies2.Strategy Integration Between Inbound and Other Marketing Initiatives3. Has the customer-centric company arrived?Business’s 2013 Priorities4.Formalizing Relationships Between Sales and Marketing5. What are marketers’ top inbound marketing priorities?Marketers Rate Their 2013 Goals6.Marketers Rate Their 2013 Concerns7.Tracking Corporate Support for Inbound Activities8.Internal Barriers to Inbound Activities2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 2

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Chapter One: Are You Inbound? Executive Insights on Inbound Marketing’sIndustry SaturationThe first chapter of the 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report focuses on inbound marketing’scurrent market share. Our data from a broad range of marketers – both decision-makers andpractitioners – reveals key insights regarding the current role inbound marketing plays in informingbroader corporate strategy.Additionally, we explore which operational groups have bought into inbound marketing strategiesand which teams remain stumbling blocks on the path to company-wide adoption of an inboundmarketing philosophy.This chapter includes the following sections:1. Is inbound mandatory? Marketing’s adoption of inbound strategies2. Is inbound marketing definitional? Strategy integration between and inbound and othermarketing initiatives3. Has the customer-centric company arrived? Business’ 2013 priorities4. Does inbound address the marketing-sales divide? Formalizing relationships between salesand marketing teams5. What are marketers’ top inbound marketing priorities? Marketers rate their 2013 goals6. What are the top inbound marketing challenges? Marketers rate their 2013 concerns7. Who are inbound marketing’s internal fans? Tracking corporate support for inbound activities8. Who is blocking inbound? Internal barriers to inbound activitiesKey discoveries• Inbound has achieved a majority market share: The majority of marketers have embracedinbound strategies. In 2013, 60% of companies have adopted some element of the inboundmethodology into their overall strategy.• Amid rapid growth, some marketers still struggle to define “inbound marketing”:According to our survey results, the industry still suffers from some educational gaps. Whilethe rapid growth we have witnessed to date is impressive - 60% of marketers have2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 3#SOIM

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currently adopted inbound strategies – there is still room for growth, as an additional 19% ofmarketers are unsure whether to characterize their marketing activities as “inbound”. Asthe industry matures, and more marketers become educated on the inbound methodology,we expect this confusion to abate.• Adopting an inbound philosophy requires strategy integration: Marketers who haveembraced inbound recognize that success depends on shifting marketing’s overall focusand weaving inbound’s content-rich, customer-focused strategy through all your businesspractices.In 2013, marketers generally embraced that goal, with 81% of companies reporting somelevel of integration between inbound marketing and larger marketing goals. In fact, only 5%were not integrated at all. Done correctly, we expect inbound strategies to help frameglobal marketing strategy. However, as we have seen, some marketers continue to see“inbound marketing” as a separate channel – akin to email marketing, advertising, or othercampaign-based marketing strategies.• The customer-centric company is born: Industry-wide, marketers are talking about theadvent of a customer-focused business model. Putting the customer first means making thecustomers’ best interests the guiding force behind all your business decisions. While manycompanies say they do this, it is much harder to truly practice this tenet.Inbound marketing is leading a shift away from the internal focus on sales, marketing, andproduct, toward strategic decision-making based on the wants and needs of the customer.Foretelling this shift, 50% of our 2013 survey respondents indicate that they consider theircompanies primarily customer-focused and nearly 25% of marketers cite reaching the rightaudience as their top priority for 2013. Despite this buzz, however, our research shows thatthe remaining half of marketers have yet to make this shift. Further, customer-centriccompanies lagged their marketing focused peers in overall performance.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 4#SOIM

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• Executives and sales functions not quite buying in to inbound marketing: While mostmarketers say they do inbound, when it comes to allocating resources, only 17% of salesteams and 11% of company executives lend their full support to inbound marketing efforts.To ensure inbound marketing’s long-term success, it needs to move beyond a marketing-focused tactic and gain larger support and endorsement company-wide.• Formalizing the marketing-sales handoff generates improvements to inbound ROI: Weasked marketers what kind of agreements they have established with their sales teams.Surprisingly, only 24% of companies formalized their marketing-sales handoffs. Companiesthat establish shared marketing and sales responsibilities see clear improvements in theirlead acquisition costs. In fact, the average cost per lead for marketers with a formal salesagreement is $24, versus $49 for those without.• Still, proving inbound marketing’s ROI remains a key challenge: One-quarter ofmarketers report that their top challenge in 2013 is proving the ROI of their inboundmarketing efforts. As we will see in the next chapter, the lack of reliable metrics forreporting ROI is a major obstacle for marketers.What to do with these lessons:1. Become an inbound marketing student: Inbound marketing isn’t purely a marketing tactic;it’s a philosophy. Educate yourself on end-to-end inbound marketing strategy until youdeeply understand its goals and methodology, so that you can both promote it to criticalinternal teams and effectively execute every aspect of the inbound methodology.2. Transition your company’s focus toward your customers: The heart of inbound marketingrequires turning the lens away from a rigid, product-based strategy and toward solving yourcustomers’ key challenges – and delighting them with insight and education along the way.To do that, you need to truly understand who those customers are and what they need.Adopt detailed personas to help your team members clearly visualize who they areserving, and then take serious measures to ensure you are using a persona-centricapproach in all your business decisions. At HubSpot, we take our personas so seriouslythat we reorganized our office so our teams each sit by persona.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 5#SOIM

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3. Sell inbound marketing throughout your company – especially to sales, IT, and execs:To ensure the long-term success of inbound marketing in your company, it’s important topitch the business case for inbound to key internal stakeholders – particularly your IT,sales, and executive teams. Communicate your goals and timelines and learn to socializeyour inbound successes. This communication will support cross-functional teamwork andemphasize inbound’s benefits for your company. Know what numbers specifically matter toyour business’ bottom line, then track and report on the key inbound marketing metrics thatsupport these goals.4. Define mutual goals and responsibilities for marketing-sales alignment: There is a longhistory of pain and misalignment between sales and marketing teams – but they are notdoomed to that fate. Develop a productive relationship between your marketing and salesteams by establishing concrete metrics and mutual responsibilities for both groups.To work in a real-world business setting, this relationship needs to be both concrete andimmediate, and it must hold both marketing and sales accountable for results. It can’t justbe an abstract 30-day plan that neither team truly gets around to following. For example,create a service-level agreement (SLA). An SLA gives both teams a measure for success bydefining expectations. It gives marketing hard numbers on how many quality leads togenerate each month and sales a plan for how to follow up with those leads.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 6#SOIM

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Integrating inbound marketing into the overall marketing mix is moreimportant than ever. Content used to form the backbone of inbound effortsmust be supported with other paid, earned, and owned tactics to reachmaximum effectiveness, and that requires plenty of internal cooperation andstrategic planning. -Jay BaerAuthor, Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is About Help not Hype,http://jaybaer.com2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 7#SOIM

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1. Is inbound mandatory? Marketing’s adoption of inbound strategiesInbound marketing has been heralded as the next must-do marketing activity. In Chapter Two, wewill cover the business case for implementing inbound, which will explain much of its surgingpopularity. Before going through the process of proving inbound’s financials, we first wanted toexplore how well marketers understand the key facets of inbound marketing, and how wellinbound strategies are currently folded into larger business planning.This is the first year that we’ve explicitly asked about inbound marketing saturation in our State ofInbound Marketing Report. We found that nearly 60% of marketers implement some kind ofinbound strategy today. This is impressive given inbound’s relatively short lifespan thus far.This question uncovered a surprising piece of evidence: of the companies responding to thesurvey, 19% did not know if they used inbound techniques or not. To the industry, this means weneed to clarify what constitutes inbound marketing, as nearly one out of five marketers remainsconfused on how to classify their marketing activities. (For more information on how to define“inbound marketing,” see the Introduction section of this report.)For the long-term success of the inbound marketing industry, people need to “get it” – and not justtry inbound without being able to define it or understand the business case.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 8#SOIM

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Q: Does your company do inbound marketing? Digging further into the survey data, we find that marketing agencies lead the pack in terms ofinbound marketing adoption, with 73% implementing inbound strategies. B2B companies are alsoearly to embrace inbound with 65% reporting inbound practices this year.Lagging inbound marketing adaptors include consumer-focused firms; just 46% of B2C companiesreport conducting inbound marketing. While the PPC legacy may make it difficult for B2Bcompanies to embrace inbound marketing’s concept of a lead, adopting an inbound methodologyis a clear competitive advantage for those companies that capitalize early on a pull-marketingapproach.Similarly, it is somewhat surprising that nonprofit agencies fall behind in inbound implementationbecause inbound is an ideal fit for the nonprofit business model. Building a following or donationbase among cause enthusiasts and supporters requires similar dedication to enchanting an58%23%19%Inbound Adoption Reaches Majority, butEducational Opportunities RemainNearly 60% of marketers have adopted inbound strategies, while 19%unsure how to categorize their eﬀortsYesNoDont know/not applicable2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 9#SOIM

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audience by delivering top quality content; however, only 41% of nonprofits report adoptinginbound tactics for 2013.Our reported inbound adoption rate is also strong in light of the fact that only 9% of respondentsindicate they use HubSpot software, which gives us a much more accurate assessment of overallindustry inbound adoption – rather than reporting just on the subset of marketers who useHubSpot for inbound.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 10#SOIM

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2. Is inbound marketing definitional? Strategy integration between inbound andother marketing initiativesInbound Marketing is no longer a convenient add-on or experimental area forcompanies. It is a required method of doing business in todays moreconsumer-focused world. Businesses that are embracing this consumer-focusare, ironically, finding it to be incredibly beneficial to their respective bottomlines. Inbound is often more cost efficient than old-school, outboundmarketing. Inbound is often better at building long-term customers rather thanshort-term sales.Inbound is often better at brand-building as well. Understanding how and whycompanies are using inbound vs. outbound marketing is critical to buildingthese more effective approaches for your own business.- Jason Falls,VP of Digital Strategy, CafePress Inc.Founder, http://SocialMediaExplorer.com2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 11#SOIM

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To effect change in an organization, inbound needs to be more than just a series of marketingcampaigns aimed at “pulling” people toward your company website. True inbound marketingsuccess occurs when your company adopts an inbound marketing philosophy and weaves thestrategy of delivering quality content and delighting customers throughout every facet of thebusiness.How do marketers make inbound a framing methodology? It requires assimilating inboundcampaigns with the larger marketing strategy to ensure all your marketing efforts are pulling in theright direction.To find out what strides marketers have made with full-scale inbound adoption, we asked how theyintegrate their inbound strategies with their other marketing efforts, including traditional marketingand campaign-based email sends.Q: How integrated is your companys inbound strategy with your larger marketing strategy?34%47%8%5%0%5%10%15%20%25%30%35%40%45%50%Completely integrated Somewhat integrated SomewhatunintegratedNot integratedMajority of Marketers Integrate Inbound withCorporate Strategy81% of inbound strategy is at least somewhat integrated with broadergoals2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 12#SOIM

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The good news? Eighty-one percent of companies report that inbound marketing is at leastsomewhat integrated into their larger marketing strategies, and only 5% were not integrated at all.Done correctly, we expect inbound strategies to help frame global marketing strategy. However,as we have seen, some marketers continue to see inbound marketing as a separate channel –akin to campaign-based email marketing, advertising, or other campaign-based marketingstrategies.For example, an integrated marketing team would use inbound marketing philosophy to frame allits marketing efforts. At heart, this means developing a unified marketing front aligned aroundserving and delighting customers, using personas to develop thought leadership content, and thenpromoting it through your various channels working together – from social media outreach, toautomated email nurturing campaigns, and even occasional PPC campaigns used to promotespecific campaigns.These reported integration rates bode well for the long-term success of inbound marketingpractices. Making sure that every element of your marketing serves your inbound goals is vital toinbound’s ultimate success in your company.However, while most companies are integrating their inbound tactics with other marketing efforts,companies are 38% more likely to be somewhat integrated than completely integrated, showingthat we still have some work before companies become complete inbound organizations.Predictably, CEOs lead the charge for developing more cohesive marketing strategies. Forty-eightpercent of CEOs say inbound is completely integrated in their organization, as opposed to just 34%of the average. The results are expected, given it’s the C-suite’s job to set strategic vision for thecompany. Once CEOs or CMOs buy into inbound marketing’s impressive results, they wouldunderstandably push them throughout their organizations.Similarly, marketing agencies are much more integrated than their peers, with 49% completelyintegrated and 86% at least somewhat integrated. B2B companies are also much more likely to becompletely integrated – at a rate of 38% completely integrated versus just 27% reported by theirB2C counterparts.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 13#SOIM

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While the relative sophistication of enterprise companies’ marketing efforts would suggest theirinbound efforts would be more integrated than the general population, we found the opposite.Just 21% of enterprise companies completely assimilate inbound marketing with larger strategy.This data suggests that, while large companies have more resources to allocate to marketingefforts, more moving parts makes it more difficult to ensure all marketing teams move in the samedirection. While it is encouraging that enterprise companies are increasingly adopting inboundmarketing techniques, they will not realize full potential until inbound’s efforts are threaded through– and their successes tied into – larger marketing goals.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 14#SOIM

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"Inbound Marketing is global(!). I find it fascinating that what was once acontroversial idea evangelized by a handful of us way back in 2007 hasspread to smart marketers everywhere who want to grow their business now.In the past few years as I delivered my keynotes around the world, Ive metInbound Marketers … in places like Egypt, Bulgaria, India, the UK, Poland,Panama, and Bahrain. Heck, if a small eco-resort in Western Belize called theLodge at Chaa Creek can secure top search engine results and grow theirbusiness quickly through Inbound Marketing, theres no longer any excusesfor Inbound Marketing adoption for you or your business. But no matterwhere I am and no matter who I am speaking with, the biggest barrier is thefour letter word that begins with F -- FEAR. Dont let your fear of somethingnew hold you back."- David Meerman Scott,HubSpot Marketer in Residence and author of 8 books including "The NewRules of Marketing and PR", now in over 25 languages from Bulgarian toVietnamese2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 15#SOIM

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3. Has the customer-centric company arrived? Business’s 2013 priorities“You have to know the people you want to reach in order to make contentthat they will love. This isnt just about profiles of who they are, but you haveto know in your soul exactly the type of people they are. Then youll createcontent that isnt all about pitching or landing the sale. It will share more aboutyour company or solve a problem that they have. Theyll begin to connectwith you and then all the other great content you have that does include thehard sell will come into play and help convert them into a customer. Start withthe soul and end with the sale. Not the other way around.- C.C. Chapman,Founder of The Cleon Foundation and author of Amazing Things Will Happenhttp://www.cleonfoundation.com andhttp://www.amazingthingswillhappen.com“Customer-centric company” is a catchphrase increasingly used in inbound marketing circles. Whatdoes it mean to be customer-focused? Putting the customer first means making the customers’best interests the guiding force behind all your business decisions. While many companies saythey do this, it is much harder to truly practice this tenet.For example, customer-centric marketing directly works to meet and serve the needs of itscustomer base by offering them thought leadership content and educational material, rather than2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 16#SOIM

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content that “pitches” your wares. It means taking the “I” out of your marketing collateral - andfocusing your efforts on the customers’ pain points.To discover how many businesses have adopted a customer-centric approach, we askedmarketers whether they consider their company to be primarily customer-, marketing-, product-, orsales-focused. As you can see in the adjacent chart, more than half of marketers considerthemselves to be primarily customer-focused. Product-focused companies came in second at adistant 15% of the population, with sales- and marketing-focused companies rounding out thebottom of the pile, each at 13%.Q: Do you consider your company to be primarily (customer focused, marketing focused, productfocused or sales focused)?While data reflects the accurate focus on customers, it also means that nearly half of allrespondents are operating on a business model that doesn’t focus on their customers – which isless than ideal.50%15%13% 14%0%10%20%30%40%50%60%Customer focused Product focused Sales focused Marketing focusedCustomer-Focused Companies DominateHalf of marketers report their companies are primarily focused oncustomers2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 17#SOIM

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Diving deeper into the data also shows a slight anomaly to this trend.Looking at firms executing inbound marketing strategies, response rates actually skew towardmarketing-focused companies, rather than customer-centric teams. Nearly 70% of marketing-focused firms implemented inbound marketing strategies, as opposed to 60% of customer-focusedcompanies. This 10% difference begs the question of whether inbound marketers truly understandthat, at its core, inbound is a strategy that puts the customer first.Similarly, when looking at inbound marketing results, 49% of marketing-focused companies nettedROI from inbound marketing, as opposed to 42% of customer-focused companies and just 38% ofsales-focused companies.Looking at our segmented data, 45% of marketing agencies indicated they were customer-focused, though 39% of agencies also noted they were more marketing-focused than most otherindustries.B2C companies displayed more of a customer focus at 59% -- versus 47% of B2B companies – butnearly 18% of business-to-consumer companies consider themselves marketing-focused.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 18#SOIM

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4. Does inbound address the marketing-sales divide? Formalizing relationshipsbetween sales and marketing teamsMany marketers consider the divide between marketing and sales teams a major challenge in theirlead generation efforts. Sales and marketing teams use different languages, are judged ondifferent metrics and timelines, and consequently, often suffer from a lack of transparency. Thisdivide can result in finger-pointing and equating marketing to a cost center, not a trusted partnerdelivering bottom-line results.The wealth of tracking and analytics central to inbound marketing efforts can significantly bridgethis gap. Successful inbound marketing can follow customers through their entire lifecycle, fromtheir first site visit, to the point they become a lead, through the sales handoff, until the final sale.Armed with actual data on lead generation, marketing teams can justify which leads theyproduced. From there, marketing and sales teams can hammer out clear lead goals that identifywhat leads marketing must deliver each month and define how sales will follow up with thoseleads, using tools such as SLAs. Concrete expectations and hard numbers for both teams createalignment between sales and marketing.We wanted to see how effectively marketers are addressing this challenge, so we asked them ifthey have a formal agreement between their sales and marketing teams to determine each team’sresponsibilities.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 19#SOIM

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Q: Does your company have a formal agreement between sales and marketing teams todetermine both teams responsibilities?A number of factors can complicate creating a formal marketing-sales relationship, but it’ssurprising that only 24% of marketers report any concrete agreements between these teams inrespect to defining lead responsibilities.This is a major challenge for the long-term health of the inbound industry. Without connectingmarketers’ lead generation and sales efforts, marketing cannot prove its bottom-line contribution.As we would expect, companies that have adopted inbound marketing (shown in the chart below)are also more likely to strategically align their sales and marketing teams.42%27%0%5%10%15%20%25%30%35%40%45%No YesDespite Inroads, Marketers Continue to Reporta Marketing-Sales DivideLess than one-third of ﬁrms have formalized marketing-salesagreements2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 20#SOIM

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Q: Does your company have a formal agreement between sales and marketing teams todetermine both teams responsibilities?/Do you do inbound marketing?According to our research, 73% of the companies that reported a formal marketing-salesagreement engaged in inbound marketing this year, while only 14% of firms with formal marketing-sales goals reported no inbound activity for 2013. Among companies without defined leadhandoffs, this number drops to 50% executing inbound strategies. While not causal, there is aclear link between adopting inbound marketing and improving communications with your salesteam.At the Enterprise Level, Formal Marketing-Sales Agreements Drastically Boost Bottom-LineResultsGiven that firms with large sales teams would have the greatest need for strong marketing-salesrelationships, we also looked specifically at companies with more than 200 employees and,consequently, a larger and more diverse sales team.73%14% 12%50%34%17%53%19%28%0%20%40%60%80%100%Yes No Dont know/notapplicableInbound Marketing Firms More Likely to SolidifyMarketing-Sales RelationshipsNearly 75% of companies with a formal marketing-sales agreementimplemented inbound in 2013YesNoDon’t know/notapplicable2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 21#SOIM

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Thirty-seven percent of enterprise companies have formal agreements with their sales teams.However, 37% of enterprise marketers have yet to establish formal contracts with their sales teamsand 26% of companies are unsure whether or not they have an agreement or not.It’s a bit troubling that more than a quarter of enterprise-level companies do not know if they havea formal agreement with their sales teams – meaning that even if they have one, more than 63% offirms are not rigorously supporting enterprise-level relationships with sales, which is a verysurprising number if you consider the dollar values for most of these deals.Detailed in the table above, enterprise companies that have formalized marketing-sales handoffsalso show dramatic reductions in lead generation costs – a compelling argument for large firmsconsidering an SLA or other formal marketing-sales agreements. In fact, adopting a marketing-sales agreement saves companies an average of $195.84 in total cost per customer, sitting at anaverage of $290.From an industry standpoint, technology firms – where the term “SLA” originated – have a 40%adoption rate for formalized marketing-sales agreements, which is 48% better than the overall rate.B2B companies are 8% more likely to delineate marketing-sales obligations than B2Companies.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 22#SOIM

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The survey revealed that a surprising 47% of our CEO/CMO audience ignores formal marketing-sales agreement development. With their bottom-line focus and the distinct benefits delivered by amarketing-sales alignment, we would expect this number to be higher. Analytics and betterreporting, both of which are facilitated by inbound marketing tracking, will go a long way to provingmarketing’s contributions and help the C-suite embrace formal delineations between sales andmarketing.The challenge with inbound marketing is that it can be done in a silo.Because of this, large and small brands cannot take full advantage of buildingmarketing programs that can truly change customer behavior. For brands totransition into media companies, they must work together across theorganization and enable employees, partners and customers to feed thecontent engine day and day out. The convergence of media - paid, earnedand owned - is also a necessary integration in order to reach customers inthe right channels at the right time. This requires marketing teams to integratenot just with content distribution/integration but also with planning andmeasurement.- Michael Brito,SVP, Social Business Strategy, Edelman http://www.britopian.com2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 23#SOIM

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5. What are marketers’ top inbound priorities? Marketers rate their 2013 goals[I] love inbound marketing - this year we are definitely focusing more on thatthan traditional marketing. We are looking at setting up workflows and gettingall of our systems integrated and talking to each other for bettermeasurement of ROI.- Marketer insight,2013 State of Inbound Marketing SurveyA major key to understanding the state of inbound marketing in 2013 is learning what marketersare trying to achieve. We asked both marketing executives and practitioners to note their toppriorities for the year.As the chart below illustrates, 23% of marketers say their top priority is reaching the right audience,tied with converting leads into customers. Rounding out priorities this year includes 20% ofmarketers looking to increase total lead volume, 18% citing creating quality content, and 13%looking to prove ROI.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 24#SOIM

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Q: What are your company’s top marketing PRIORITIES?With two of the top three priorities – combining for 43% of respondents – centered on leadgeneration, it’s clear that sourcing and converting leads is a dominant focus for 2013. Reaching theright audience is similarly important to most marketers, with just under one-quarter of marketersciting this as their top priority. If, as we expect, the inbound universe continues to adopt a morecustomer-centric philosophy, this number should also rise.23% 23%20%18%14%0%5%10%15%20%25%Reaching theright audienceConverting leadsto customersIncreasing totallead volumeCreating qualitycontentProving the ROIof our marketingactivitiesProspect Targeting, Lead Conversion Cited asTop Inbound Goals23% of marketers focused on both reaching the right audience andconverting leads2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 25#SOIM

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“Marketing gets easier – and more effective – when you realize its justcommunication. Its everything you say to customers, and its also everythingyou do. Focus on what your words and actions are communicating – yourcontent, your site, your support team – and youll find that your relationshipswith your customers start to ‘magically’ get better. And thats when you seethe loyalty, social sharing, and referral business that create vibrant health foryour business.”- Brian Clark,founder and CEO of CopybloggerDespite the wealth of recent articles discussing the rise of content marketing, only 18% ofmarketers are purely focused on developing quality content in 2013. However, because high-quality, educational content is the lynchpin for inbound success, we would expect this number torise over the coming years.This report on marketers’ priorities highlights a distinct lack of urgency behind ROI-driven concerns– which is a theme we will see repeated throughout the rest of this report. In fact, only 14% ofmarketers rate proving ROI as their top goal. In contrast, in the next section, we will discuss howtracking concrete ROI is a major challenge for 25% of all marketers. Similarly, in Chapter Two, wewill discuss at length the 34% of marketers who fail to measure the ROI of their inbound activities.For the long-term survival of the inbound model, marketers will need to better understand how tojustify their inbound time and budget allocations.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 26#SOIM

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Q: What are your company’s top marketing PRIORITIES?B2C companies are slightly more concerned with reaching the right customers than are B2Bcompanies, with 27% and 21% of CEOs noting this priority, respectively. This data makes sense inlight of consumer-facing marketers’ keen customer emphasis, as B2C companies were 20% morelikely to be customer-focused than their B2B counterparts.Reaching the right audience is a primary concern internationally. More than 23% of internationalrespondents report this metric to be the top priority, followed by converting leads to customersand increasing lead volume, with 22% and 21% of the responses, respectively.25%22%20% 19%12%0%5%10%15%20%25%30%Reaching the rightaudienceConverting leadsto customersIncreasing totallead volumeCreating qualitycontentProving the ROI ofour marketingactivitiesReaching Target Market Top Priority Among CEOsMain goal of nearly 25% of CEOs is ﬁnding the right audience2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 27#SOIM

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6. What are the top inbound marketing challenges? Marketers rate their 2013concernsThe fact that only 18% are focused on creating quality content doesntsurprise me (perhaps that they admit it does) - the fact is creating qualitycontent is hard work and it takes a commitment on the part of marketingleadership to pour the time, energy and journalistic resources into it. But, likeall things, when you see the payoff you make it a priority. I find that if I can getorganizations excited about content through analytics and SEO results thatget pretty committed to blogging.- John Jantsch,Duct Tape Marketing, http://ducttapemarketing.com/We wanted to learn more about the major hurdles marketing faces when implementing inbound intheir organizations. To do that, we asked more than 3,300 marketers about their key concerns andbarriers to inbound marketing.As you can see in the chart below, most inbound marketing challenges focus on our wallets.Proving inbound marketing’s ROI is the highest rated challenge, netting one-quarter of allresponses. This laser-focus on ROI is particularly interesting in light of our top priorities research, inwhich we found that marketers report tracking ROI is more of a second-tier initiative in 2013.Trying to secure adequate budget for inbound marketing was a close second place at 20%. Otherkey challenges included 16% of marketers naming controlling their technology or website as the2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 28#SOIM

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top concern; 11% looking to target content for an international audience; 9% hiring top talent; 8%training their teams; and finally, 5% that were most concerned with finding C-suite support.Q: What are your company’s top marketing CHALLENGES?Marketers also continue to express a skills gap with their technology counterparts. Overall, 16% ofmarketers indicate that controlling their inbound technology is the most significant challenge theyface in 2013. Many marketers struggle to work with their technology resources to get a betterhandle on their inbound initiatives. B2C companies spend slightly more time than average fightingwith technology – 19% versus the 15% average – likely because their website conversion paths areslightly more complicated. As the industry develops more intuitive, do-it-yourself inbound tools,marketers should need to rely less on IT teams to enable their inbound marketing goals.0%5%10%15%20%25%30%Proving ROI Tops Challenges Faced byInbound Marketers25% of marketers concerned with proving bottom-line results2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 29#SOIM

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Interestingly, finding an executive sponsor is only seen as the top challenge by 5% of ouraudience. This could mean one of two things: first, many executives are interested in learningmore about inbound marketing, or second, marketers simply aren’t at an inbound maturity level topush for executive sponsorship.While only 10% of companies cite hiring top talent as their primary concern, we expect this numberto rise over the next several years. As we prove the business case for inbound and itsimplementation grows, more and more companies will be looking for top inbound talent – whichmay be lacking industry-wide. We will fully explore inbound marketing staffing in Chapter Four ofthis report.Proving ROI Is a Paramount Concern in 2013As we will see in the next chapter, the lack of reliable metrics for reporting ROI is a major challengefor marketers. So, the 25% of marketers predominantly concerned with proving the ROI of inboundmarketing highlights a major issue for inbound’s long-term sustainability. Without reliable ROImetrics or a C-suite that is completely sold on the inbound methodology, it is difficult to imagineinbound marketing will continue to grow at the rapid pace it has enjoyed to date.Related to this issue, Chapter Two will review inbound budgets, which have enjoyed meteoricincreases in the span of the last five years. This trend is unlikely to continue unless marketers cansucceed in figuring out how to prove the value of their inbound marketing expenditures. Asmarketers establish year-over-year data and get better at tracking their analytics, they should getmore fluent in proving the ROI of their inbound efforts.Marketing agencies work comparatively harder to prove the ROI of inbound marketing, with 30%citing this as their top challenge – 15% more than the industry at large. They are also moreconcerned with hiring top talent – at 13%, compared with an industry-wide average of 9%.B2B companies struggle to prove the ROI of inbound marketing much more than other companies,with 27% reporting this struggle versus the 21% average. Conversely, as we noted earlier in thischapter, B2C companies spend slightly more time fighting with technology – 19% versus the 15%average – likely because their website conversion paths are slightly more complicated.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 30#SOIM

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Proving ROI is also a challenge for our international audience, though at 23% it tracks fairly closelywith the larger marketing universe. Targeting content for an international audience sees a slightuptick as a challenge on the international stage – with 14% as opposed to the 11% of total industryaverages. As it would be surprising to imagine that all international companies have effectivelysolved their international targeting questions, we can probably assume that most marketers arethinking on a global scale.The biggest challenge is to convince the board to shift from traditionaladvertising to digital and online marketing.- Marketer insight,2013 State of Inbound Marketing Survey2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 31#SOIM

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7. Who are inbound marketing’s fans? Tracking corporate support for inboundactivities The challenge with inbound marketing is that it can be done in a silo. Andbecause of this, large and small brands cannot take full advantage of buildingmarketing programs that can truly change customer behavior. For brands totransition into media companies, they must work together across theorganization and enable employees, partners and customers to feed thecontent engine day and day out. The convergence of media - paid, earnedand owned is a also necessary integration to in order to reach customers inthe right channels at the right time. This requires marketing teams to integratenot just with content distribution/integration but also with planning andmeasurement.-Michael Brito,SVP, Social Business Strategy, Edelmanhttp://www.britopian.comTo be truly successful, inbound marketing cannot be a stand-alone strategy, it must be integratedinto the fiber of overall marketing strategy, and larger business goals, including sales targets andrevenue forecasting. At HubSpot, we call this company-wide integration “smarketing” – which2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 32#SOIM

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coalesces the goals of sales and marketing teams into one cohesive unit, rather than twofunctional groups with different and often competing objectives and measurement.Across the industry, we wanted to learn how effectively inbound has secured cross functional buyin, so we asked marketers which teams or operational groups provided the most support forinbound efforts.As you can see in the chart below, while 38% of marketing teams provide significant support toinbound strategies, only 17% of sales and 11% of company executives throw their weight behindinbound.Q: Which teams/operational groups provide the MOST support (in terms of budget, personnel, orsponsorship) to your companys inbound marketing efforts?According to this data, inbound is still mostly a marketing-centric initiative, and it has not yet beenembraced in broader business planning.38%17%13%11%9%0%5%10%15%20%25%30%35%40%45%Marketing team Sales team MarketingoperationsC-suite/companyexecutivesIT teamMarketing Teams Deliver Majority of InboundMarketing SupportMarketing is 125% more likely than sales to provide inbound resources2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 33#SOIM

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Teasing the numbers by segment, we see further evidence of this inbound silo. Just 18% of CEOsreport they believe the C-suite provides significant support for inbound marketing initiatives,though they are slightly more likely to report sales’ support for inbound marketing.Company executives at enterprise firms are also much less likely to put their weight behindinbound marketing efforts, with just 9% of C-level teams at companies with 200+ employeessupporting inbound campaigns.Conversely, marketing teams at enterprise firms are 38% more likely to provide operationalresources for inbound marketing efforts, with 43% of large marketing teams supplying budget,personnel, or other sponsorship resources.Overall, marketers reported a somewhat disappointing level of resources supporting inboundmarketing efforts. Clearly, in order to achieve widespread adoption for inbound techniques,marketers need to focus more on positioning inbound as a company-wide initiative, not onerelegated to the marketing water cooler.In particular, efforts to generate more executive support for inbound marketing – by clearlydefining the process and explaining the bottom-line benefits – will be necessary for inboundmarketing to become a universal marketing technique.Inbound marketing flat-out works. The trick is to convince the ignorant thattheyre missing out. Smarketing is tough!- Marketer insight,2013 State of Inbound Marketing Survey2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 34#SOIM

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8. Who is blocking inbound? Internal barriers to inbound activitiesWe are a smaller company with great ideas and visions [but] without the staffor budget to accommodate our goals. We know what we need to be doing(social media, blogging, webinars, case studies, white papers, etc.) but wedont have a way of accomplishing this now in a tough economy.- Marketer insight,2013 State of Inbound Marketing SurveyAs the adage goes, a team is only as strong as its weakest component. We wanted to look at theinternal barriers toward company-wide integration to figure out which functional groups mightinhibit inbound adoption.In addition to asking which units are the most supportive of inbound marketing efforts, we alsoasked marketers which internal teams provide the least budget, personnel, or sponsorship to theirinbound marketing efforts.The chart below tells a story of marketing’s struggle to obtain resources for inbound. Challengeswith IT lead the pack, with 24% of marketers reporting that their IT teams provide the least backingfor inbound efforts. Similarly, sales and executives round out the functional groups offering minimalsupport for inbound marketing, at 12% each.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 35#SOIM

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Q: Which teams/operational groups provide the LEAST support (in terms of budget, personnel, orsponsorship) to your companys inbound marketing efforts?It’s not surprising that 12% of marketers claim sales professionals undervalue inbound objectives.As we saw earlier in this chapter, only 27% of companies report any kind of formal agreementdelineating responsibilities between sales and marketing teams. With this in mind, it’s easy tounderstand some of the reasons why sales teams provide minimal support to marketers’ inboundefforts.Clearly, the marketing-sales divide is not the only functional challenge deterring inbound adoption.In this data, we can also identify evidence of the customary marketing and IT dissonance – in24%12%12%5%2%00.050.10.150.20.25IT teamSales teamC-suite/companyexecutivesMarketing team MarketingoperationsMarketers Struggle to Secure IT Resources forInbound MarketingIT teams oﬀer minimal inbound support, reports 24% of marketers2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 36#SOIM

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which marketing consistently tries, and fails, to secure the necessary tech resources to enact theirdigital marketing ideas.The 2013 State of Inbound Marketing data segments draw a similar picture. The IT team is muchless likely to be supportive for B2B companies. Responses say that 26% of B2B IT groups impedeinbound efforts versus 20% for B2C companies. B2B firms likely struggle for IT resources becauseit’s harder to draw a direct line to ROI for lead gen efforts. B2B sales teams also lag in supportingB2B inbound efforts, with nearly 14% of responses.Enterprise firms face a similar struggle with IT bandwidth, as 31% of marketers in large companiesindicate a lack of support from their IT teams.Politically, getting your IT team invested in the promise of inbound marketing is one of the bestthings you can do to ensure inbound’s success. While some IT teams may just say “no” to everymarketing initiative, the vast majority of companies are capable of building successful IT-marketingpartnerships. It just takes the right communication explaining the long-term, bottom-line benefits ofinbound strategies.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 37#SOIM

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Chapter One Appendix1. Is inbound mandatory? Marketing’s adoption of inbound strategiesQ: Does your company do inbound marketing? (Segmented by industry)58%23%19%73%14%12%0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%Yes No Dont know/not applicableAgencies Implement Inbound Marketing StrategiesAhead of Industry AveragesNearly 75% of agencies use inbound marketing in 2013OverallMarketingAgency2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 38#SOIM

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4. Does inbound address the marketing-sales divide? Formalizingrelationships between sales and marketing teamsQ: Does your company have a formal agreement between sales and marketing teams todetermine both teams responsibilities? (Segmented by company size)36% 36%28%0%5%10%15%20%25%30%35%40%Yes No Dont know/not applicableEnterprise Firms Lead Marketing-Sales RoleDemarcationMarketing-sales agreements in place at 36% of companies with 200+employees2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 45#SOIM

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Q: Does your company have a formal agreement between sales and marketing teams todetermine both teams responsibilities? (Segmented by companies implementing inboundmarketing)58%23%19%73%14% 12%50%34%17%53%19%28%0%20%40%60%80%100%YesNo Dont know/notapplicableDoes your company have an SLA?Inbound Marketing Firms More Likely to SolidifySales-Marketing RelationshipsNearly 75% of companies with a formal sales-marketing agreementimplemented inbound in 2013OverallYesNoDon’t know/notapplicableDoes yourcompany doinboundmarketing?2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 46#SOIM

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Q: Does your company have a formal agreement between sales and marketing teams todetermine both teams responsibilities? (Segmented by business model)28%44%20%45%34%42%0%20%40%60%80%100%Yes NoSlightly More B2B Companies Detail Marketing-Sales Obligations8% more B2B ﬁrms formalize mutual responsibilities than B2C peersB2BB2CB2B2C2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 47#SOIM

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6. What are the top inbound marketing challenges? Marketers rate their 2013concernsQ: What are your company’s top marketing CHALLENGES? (Segmented by industry)25%20%5% 8%16%11% 9%29%21%4%10% 12%8%13%0%20%40%60%80%100%Inbound Marketing Agencies Struggle to ProveROI, Control Technology30% of agencies say top concern is demonstrating ROIOverallMarketingAgency2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 49#SOIM

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Q: What are your company’s top marketing CHALLENGES? (Segmented by country)23%19%16%14%9% 9%6%0%5%10%15%20%25%Proving theROI of ourmarketingactivitiesSecuringenoughbudgetControllingmytechnology orwebsiteTargetingcontent for aninternationalaudienceHiring toptalentTraining myteamFinding anexecutivesponsorInternational Marketing Challenges Track Closelywith U.S. Concerns23% of international ﬁrms concerned with proving ROI of inbound2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 51#SOIM

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7. Who are inbound marketing’s fans? Tracking corporate support forinbound activitiesQ: Which teams/operational groups provide the MOST support (in terms of budget, personnel, orsponsorship) to your companys inbound marketing efforts? (Segmented by job title)32%19% 19%13%10%0%5%10%15%20%25%30%35%Marketing team Sales team C-suite IT team MarketingoperationsCEOs Report Mixed Support for Inbound Eﬀorts19% of CEOs oﬀer signiﬁcant support for inbound marketing initiatives2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 52#SOIM

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8. Who is blocking inbound? Internal barriers to inbound activitiesQ: Which teams/operational groups provide the LEAST support (in terms of budget, personnel, orsponsorship) to your companys inbound marketing efforts? (Segmented by company size)31%18%16%5%3%0%5%10%15%20%25%30%35%IT team Sales team C-suite/companyexecutivesMarketing team MarketingoperationsEnterprise Companies Struggle with IT TeamBandwidth31% of enterprise marketers report their IT teams are unsupportive2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 54#SOIM

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The second chapter covers how marketers are calculating the ROI of theirinbound eﬀorts, measures how inbound stacks up against traditional marketingin terms of cost, and compares respective budget allocation and key factors thatimpact those budgetary decisions.The Business Case for Adopting Inbound MarketingCHAPTER 2 WHY INVEST IN INBOUND?2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 56

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Chapter Two: Why Do Inbound? The Business Case for Adopting InboundMarketingInbound marketing sounds great in theory. Who wouldn’t agree with the goal of developing greatcontent to pull people toward your company and product because they fall in love with you?Business leaders, however, cannot be satisfied with happy ideals – what HubSpot social mediascientist Dan Zarrella dismisses as the “unicorns and rainbows” perspective of digital marketing. Asmarketers, we need hard numbers to justify our activities. The question remains: Can inboundmarketing show executives the money?The second chapter of the 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report focuses on making thebusiness case for inbound marketing. It covers how marketers are calculating the ROI of theirinbound efforts, how inbound stacks up against traditional lead gen activities on a cost per lead(CPL) and cost per customer (CPA) basis, and which channels and social media platformsmarketers say deliver the best leads and customers.This chapter also looks at marketers’ 2013 budget allocations, the relative rise in inbound vs.traditional marketing budgets, and what factors impact strategic budget decisions.This chapter includes the following sections:1) Is inbound worth it? Measuring inbound marketing’s ROI2) What does lead gen cost? Lead and customer acquisition costs in 20133) Where do we get leads? Inbound vs. outbound lead sources and costs4) What is a lead worth? Marketers rate average costs per lead5) What are the best leads? Lead conversion by channel6) Where do customers come from? Customer acquisition rates by channel7) What will marketers spend on inbound this year? Tracking 2013 inbound marketing budgets8) How do 2013 inbound budgets measure up? Inbound vs. outbound budgets9) What influences budget strategy? Factors swaying 2013 budget changes10) What inbound numbers do marketers track? Evaluating inbound marketing data2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 58#SOIM

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Key discoveries• Inbound marketing produces more, better quality, cheaper leads: Twice as manymarketers say inbound delivers below average cost per lead vs. outbound strategies. Oursurvey found that 34% of the leads marketers generate in 2013 come from inboundmarketing sources. In fact, inbound marketing delivers 54% more leads into the marketingfunnel than traditional outbound leads.Inbound leads also show superior CPL and CPA. U.S. inbound marketers spending morethan $25K per year, for instance, saved an average of 13% in overall cost per lead andmore than $14 dollars for every new customer acquired vs. those relying on outboundstrategies.• For those tactics marketers effectively track, inbound delivers on its ROI promise: Forty-one percent of marketers confirm inbound produces measurable ROI, and a staggering82% of marketers who blog see positive ROI for their inbound marketing. Additionally, 41%of all marketers who changed their budgets last year did so because they witnessed pastsuccess with inbound marketing – making inbound success a full 150% more likely to driveinbound budget increases than any other rationale. While this tracking is vital for provingthe case for inbound marketing, the next evolution of the industry is a better universalinbound playbook that ties all our ROI tracking together.• We are in the midst of a growth spurt. Inbound outpaces traditional lead generation inboth lead production and spending: Forty-eight percent of marketers plan to increasetheir inbound marketing spending this year – the third year in a row that inbound budgetsare increasing at or near a 50% pace. Executives lead this strong growth, as 53% of CEOsand CMOs increased their 2013 inbound marketing budgets.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 59#SOIM

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• Social media, SEO, and blogs rank as the top channels to watch in the coming years:Social media and SEO each contribute 14% of marketers’ total pipeline in 2013. Accordingto marketers, SEO and social media also lead in sales conversions, netting 15% and 13%above average conversion rates in 2013, respectively, while accounting for a combined23% of all inbound budgets. An additional 21% of marketers report that social media hasbecome more important to their company over the past six months.Facebook leads social media customer sources, with 52% of all marketers sourcing a leadfrom Facebook in 2013 and 74% saying Facebook is important to their lead generationstrategies. Company blogs and LinkedIn tie for second place honors, with 43% ofmarketers generating a customer from each of these respective channels.Blogging and social media have also enjoyed consistently strong annual growth, with 23%of marketers investing in these channels, a 9% increase from 2012.• But, for inbound to work, it requires commitment and strategic vision: Seventy-ninepercent of companies that have a blog report a positive ROI for inbound marketing thisyear, compared to just 20% of companies who do not have a blog. In fact, 82% ofmarketers who blog daily acquire a customer using their blog, as opposed to 57% ofmarketers who blog monthly – which, by itself, is still an impressive metric. Finally,marketers spend 55% more time than budget on blogging.• Analytics remain confusing: A staggering 34% of businesses cannot or do not calculateROI in 2013. Some marketers are clearly dedicated to tracking the “hard numbers” thatmatter to executives. Fifteen percent of marketers tie their inbound results directly to eithercompany revenue or customers/wins generated.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 60#SOIM

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What to do with these lessons:1. Adopt inbound marketing early to take advantage of significant upside potential: If youhaven’t yet adopted inbound marketing, it’s not too late. Still, the early adopters of newbusiness paradigm shifts always see the best results, so don’t lose out on existingcompetitive advantages by standing on the sidelines. With the decline of traditionalmarketing’s effectiveness, marketers cannot afford to wait for their leads to dry up beforerefocusing their marketing practices. Join the first wave of marketers who understand howonline strategies have transformed marketing by clearly defining and executing your owninbound methodology.2. Fully commit to the inbound marketing model: Inbound is a theory, but it only works if youactually do it. Adopting inbound marketing is not about dipping in your toe with a fewancillary “content” campaigns or hiring one inbound marketer to sit next to your emailperson. For inbound strategy to work, it needs both resources and company-wideallegiance. To begin, educate yourself and your team – and other cross functional teams,such as sales and IT – on inbound marketing’s goals and framework, beginning with theinbound methodology in this report’s Introduction section. Then, define your customerpersonas and focus on developing rich educational material. Ultimately, your inboundresults will reflect how much, or how little, you really change your everyday businesspractices.3. Allocate enough budget and resources to implement your inbound strategies: You can’tperform without bandwidth or budget. Make sure your marketing team is armed withsufficient staff to execute on their inbound goals – as we will see in Chapter Four, mostinbound marketing teams expect to hire an average of nine new members this year.Similarly, provide your team with the tools they need to implement, optimize, and test theirinbound initiatives.4. Tie results to hard data and hard numbers that matter to your executives, such asrevenue and customer acquisition: Inbound marketing must integrate with larger businessgoals. Without connecting marketers’ lead generation and sales efforts, marketers are2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 61#SOIM

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doomed to be seen as a cost center, which is counter-productive to the goals of inboundmarketing. Inbound provides a wealth of data analysis.“Softer data,” such as brand awareness and even traffic is fine to be aware of, but reportingto the executive team means knowing which numbers clearly impact the bottom line.Specifically, executive respondents to our survey are more focused on numbers thatdirectly affect ROI, including 17% who measure revenue and 16% who look at customers orwins. Want to get ready for the next meeting with your executive team? Make sure youknow how much your inbound marketing efforts have contributed to your company’soverall revenue.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 62#SOIM

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1. Is inbound worth it? Measuring inbound marketing’s ROIThe internal barrier to inbound marketing execution is time. Tracking ROI oninbound marketing is hard, and the ones that do are looking at inboundmarketing like they do other "point of impact" campaigns, i.e., campaignsdesigned to generate ROI in a short amount of time. Inbound marketing willover time be the top producer in your marketing mix, but the results dontstart pouring in until you are committed to ROI over the course of multiplequarters. Volume is another early issue that is solved with time andcommitment. Net-net, they are the best leads -- who doesnt want someoneto walk into their store?- Craig RosenburgEditorwww.funnelholic.comAccording to our 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Survey, 48% of marketers plan to increase theirinbound spending this year – the third year in a row that inbound budgets are increasing at a paceof nearly 50%! This budget influx begs the question: Is inbound worth it?We set out to discover if inbound marketing delivers the bottom-line success that will sustain thisfinancial investment over time, and we asked marketers if inbound marketing demonstrated ROI fortheir companies.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 63#SOIM

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Overall, 41% of marketers confirm inbound marketing’s positive ROI. While this is a large number ofrespondents, it is certainly not a “hitting it out of the park” statistic.More startling in this data, however, is the sheer volume of marketers who remain on the learningcurve. In 2013, a staggering 34% of businesses cannot or do not calculate ROI at all.This lack of tracking actually put this report’s ROI data in a better light. Among those companieswho can actually calculate ROI – positive or negative – most are enjoying strong bottom-linesuccess. Just 9% of marketers who implement ROI say it is not generating desired results.Q: Did inbound marketing demonstrate ROI for your company?As you can see in the Chapter Two Appendix, 41% of either CMOs or CEOs report that inboundgenerated the positive ROI they sought last year, tracking exactly with industry averages. However,15% of the C-suite audience indicate that inbound did not produce that ROI.More than half of agencies report positive ROI in 2013. This is a case in which agencies’ relativeinbound maturity yields a direct improvement on bottom-line results. Agencies are 25% more likely41%9%34%0%5%10%15%20%25%30%35%40%45%Yes No Could not/did not calculate ROIInbound Marketing Delivers on ROI, but MarketersFace Calculation Struggles41% of marketers conﬁrmed inbounds ROI, but 34% could not calculateROI in 20132013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 64#SOIM

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to implement inbound marketing, and they report a corresponding 24% improvement indemonstrable return.Why Can’t We Measure ROI?There are a lot of factors that contribute to marketers’ struggles in calculating ROI. First, as anindustry, inbound is evolving. Marketers are still getting their arms around what inbound meansand how to track it. Additionally, committing to inbound marketing requires effort – developingstrong content to communicate with your prospects and turn them into customers isn’t a “silverbullet” solution but a transformative business process.We know that inbound marketing works – as you will see in the next section, inbound marketingefforts are twice as likely to produce low-cost leads as traditional strategies – but despite clearadvantages over traditional marketing, marketers continue to wrestle with how to define and reporton their inbound results.Overall, inbound’s ROI metrics should improve over time. Those marketers who “get” inboundmarketing are producing solid bottom-line results, while companies earlier on the learning curveare still sorting out analytics.Still, the number of marketers who don’t know how to report on their success is troubling for thelong-term health of our industry. Given that, according to a Forrester Social ManagementTechnology Report, the SEO industry alone is expected to grow to $970M by 2016, marketers arepotentially wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars a year through a lack of relevant data tracking– and that’s just one aspect of the overall inbound marketing universe.Inbound marketing execution is not easy. Even with a comprehensive software solution, bydefinition, inbound marketing is a strategy that involves multiple channels, all working in concertwith one another. While this strategy is incredibly effective in magnifying the results of all yourmarketing efforts – what we call 1+1= 3 – for beginners, it can feel like juggling a variety ofdisparate channels all at once. It may be nearly impossible to follow your end-to-end ROI thread,particularly if you are lacking the right data tracking and analytic tools – hence the 34% of verysmart marketers struggling to produce this data point.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 65#SOIM

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If these calculation challenges were to persist, it would be a virtual death knell for the inboundmarketing model. As a result, we expect a lot of strategic, educational, and technical solutionsdedicated to addressing ROI tracking in next year.Delivering ROI Requires ExecutionJust like going to the gym, inbound marketing muscles must be flexed on a regular basis forinbound to really work.To get a more complete understanding of why marketers were – or were not – reporting ROI fortheir inbound marketing practices, we looked at what inbound activities marketers executeregularly in 2013.Q: Does Your Company Publish a Blog?Survey data is always somewhat biased because it relies on self-reported activities and opinions.To develop a more comprehensive view of inbound results, we pressure-tested the 2013 State ofInbound Marketing Survey results against actual HubSpot customer experiences. From this79%20%65%33%68%28%0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%90%Yes NoBlogging Improves Inbound Marketing ROI80% of marketers with a company blog reported inbound ROI for 2013YesNo2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 66#SOIM

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customer data, we learned that inbound marketing success relies on consistency – and this trendwas clearly reflected in our survey results.Unlike more traditional ad spends, for which you cut a check and then sit back and wait for results,inbound marketing requires a consistent commitment to delivering strong content on a regularbasis. It takes more than one white paper to establish your company as a thought leader.For example, blogging is one of the oldest and most proven inbound marketing strategies.HubSpot customers who produce more than 15 blog posts a month generate an average of 1,200new leads in the same timeframe. Similarly, as you can see in the chart above, 80% of marketersresponding to the 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Survey report positive ROI for their inboundmarketing activities.We are a very small company, but every year +50% of our revenue comesfrom leads generated through the internet. The other(s) are customers fromprevious years – a lot of them generated via internet in the past.- Marketer insight2013 State of Inbound Marketing Survey2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 67#SOIM

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2. What does lead gen cost? Lead and customer acquisition costs in 2013With all the complications in tracking ROI and inbound’s admittedly time-intensive nature, why arethe majority of marketers nearly doubling their investment in inbound marketing this year?The simple answer? Inbound marketing does a better job at delivering more, higher quality leads.In the next several sections of this chapter, we will walk through the data confirming thisconclusion.Any ROI analysis has to begin with results executives really care about – the ones with a directimpact on overall revenue. To better assess inbound marketing’s total ROI, we followed the moneytrail to identify overall acquisition costs, including marketers’ average cost per lead and cost percustomer.The table below shows the average CPL and CPA for U.S. marketers spending more than $25K onmarketing this year. As you can see, in 2013, U.S. inbound marketing activities save marketers anaverage 13% in overall cost per lead and more than $14 dollars for every new customer acquired.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 68#SOIM

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Of course, as with most “simple” answers, the landscape is a little more complicated than it mayfirst appear.First, average CPLs and CPAs vary dramatically according to company and industry models. Forexample, small companies average just $32 a lead, $4 less than industry averages. This datamakes sense, given the generally lower overhead and capital that small firms spend on leadgeneration activities.Similarly, B2C firms’ shorter sales cycles produce dramatically lower overall CPAs and CPLs thando B2B lead generation activities – with an average of just $15 for each new lead and $149 foreach new customer.Marketers can also make strategic changes to improve their overall lead generation costs. Forexample, the chart below shows the total lead conversion rates in the past year for enterprise-levelcompanies that do and do not formalize their marketing-sales handoffs. As you can see, enterprise2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 69#SOIM

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companies with defined marketing-sales lead handoff strategies reduce their average cost percustomer by $197.(Note: This chart includes those who spent $0 on marketing in 2013, which skews the averagedata slightly.)With all this data to push around, it’s easy to see how marketers can get lost in the weeds whentrying to report their ROI numbers.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 70#SOIM

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3. Where do we get leads? Inbound vs. outbound lead sources and costsIn order to understand marketers’ lead generation effectiveness, we first need to look at wherethey get those leads.This starts at the top of the funnel with marketer’s primary lead sources. To find out which channelsproduced the most total leads for marketers in 2013, we asked them to identify what percent oftheir company’s total leads came from each of the major channels.Our survey found that 34% of all the leads marketers generate in 2013 come from inboundmarketing sources. In fact, inbound marketing delivers 54% more leads into the marketing funnelthan traditional outbound leads.Q: What percentage of your companys leads come from each of the following sources?34%22%0%5%10%15%20%25%30%35%40%Inbound OutboundMarketers Report Inbound Marketing GeneratesMore LeadsInbound delivers 54% more leads in the 2013 marketing funnel thanoutbound sources2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 71#SOIM

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As you can see in the Chapter Two Appendix, the top channels for lead generation include socialmedia and SEO, each contributing 14% of marketers’ total pipeline in 2013. The more mature emailmarketing channel rounded out the top three lead gen sources, producing 13% of all leads.At the other end of the spectrum, telemarketing, traditional advertising, and PPC will deliver theleast amount of leads for marketers this year, with just 6% of leads originating from each of thesecategories.Inbound Methods Deliver on Lead VolumeTo further validate these survey results, we looked at HubSpot customers’ actual lead volumesover time to see if they produced the same lead successes. In fact, HubSpot customers havewitnessed exponential lead growth after adopting inbound marketing strategies. Customers with abase of 300 leads before implementing HubSpot software grew their total average prospect list tomore than 9,100 leads in just one and a half years.Q: Did inbound marketing demonstrate ROI for your company?0100020003000400050006000700080009000100001 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15HubSpot Customers Enjoy Exponential LeadGrowthCustomers average over 9,100 leads after 1.5 years of inboundmarketingLeads growthfor HScustomers2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 72#SOIM

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Inbound marketing’s ability to produce this volume of leads is likely the main reason so manymarketers are increasing their inbound budgets this year. Certainly, marketers continue to focustheir lead gen budgets (shown in the chart below) on the ones that produce the most marketingleads, specifically social media and SEO. The chart below also shows, however, that marketers areallocating the lion’s share of their lead generation budgets to those channels that deliver the mostmarketing leads, including social media and SEO.Q: What percentage of your company’s leads come from each of the following sources?It’s interesting to note that marketers continue to allocate budget share to some tactics thatactually generate lower-than-average lead volumes, such as PPC, traditional advertising and directmail channels. This is probably a legacy of older business budget and forecasting models and the14% 14%13%8% 8%7%6% 6% 6%12%14%12%10%8%9%5%8% 8%0%2%4%6%8%10%12%14%16%Marketing Spending Closely Tracks LeadGeneration RatesSocial media, SEO top both lead sources and 2013 budget allocationsLead sourcesMarketing budget2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 73#SOIM

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lack of C-suite buy-in on the inbound “vision,” which we discussed in Chapter One. We expectthese budget allocations to reduce over time as inbound’s ROI becomes more transparent.One outlier in this chart is the differential between blogging’s budget outlay and total leadgeneration. As a key source of thought leadership content, blogging is one of the cornerstones ofsuccessful inbound strategies, which is why 67% of marketers produced a blog last year.Admittedly, blogging can be somewhat time-intensive, and requires it some upfront investment ofresources to create your blogging platform. This is usually a relatively minor investment whencompared with enterprise-level email delivery or sales forecasting technology, for example.As we discussed earlier in this chapter, successful blogging is one of the leading indicators ofeffective inbound marketing execution – 79% of companies who have a blog reported a positiveROI for inbound marketing this year, compared with just 20% of those companies who did not havea blog. This difference between total lead sources and marketers’ blogging investment is likely aresult of two issues: companies who are just beginning their blogging journey and have yet tobuild a loyal following and firms that technically “have” a blog but haven’t committed any resourcestoward delivering strong content.Why Inbound Will Continue to GrowAs we mentioned in the introduction to this report, we are in the midst of an industry-wide shiftaway from traditional marketing techniques, which are simply not working in today’s digitalbusiness world - The advent of Do Not Call Lists, email spam filters and DVR devices all mean thatcustomers have become much better at tuning out those messages they don’t want to hear. As aresult, traditional methods to source leads and customers have all but dried up, generating just22% of all leads in 2013.With old marketing tools and techniques no longer working, marketers had to turn to inboundmarketing to support their business goals. We know that marketers continue to face a learningcurve because inbound practices such as content development and search engine optimizationflex different marketing muscles than writing traditional ad copy or shaking hands at a conference.The good news is that once marketers adopt the technologies and master the skills required toexecute inbound marketing, these techniques are vastly more effective than outbound strategies,as we will see later in this chapter.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 74#SOIM

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4. What is a lead worth? Marketers rate average costs per leadBecause prospects and leads come in all shapes and sizes, it’s also valuable to look at relativelead costs in order to determine what a lead is really “worth” in 2013.To identify which lead gen strategies deliver the lowest relative costs, we asked marketers toestimate their average cost per lead vs. to their total CPLs to see how inbound marketingstrategies fared.As you can see in the chart below, twice as many marketers say inbound marketing delivers belowaverage costs per lead in comparison with outbound strategies.Q: To the best of your ability, please write in your average cost per lead.For specific channels, the chart below shows 27% of marketers report that both social media andemail marketing produce the lowest total average lead costs, followed by SEO with 25% of all low-cost rated leads.8%4%0%1%2%3%4%5%6%7%8%9%Inbound OutboundInbound Delivers Below Average CPLMarketers 50% more likely to see below average inbound CPL vs.outbound2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 75#SOIM

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Q: Please estimate your companys cost per lead for each of the channels listed below vs. youroverall average cost per lead.Trade shows account for the highest above average CPLs of all lead sources. Shown in theChapter Two Appendix, 16% of marketers cite industry conferences as the most expensive channelfor sourcing leads.27% 27%25%24%16%15%12% 12% 12%0%5%10%15%20%25%30%Social Media, Email Deliver Lower Average CPLs27% of marketers report below average CPLs for both email and socialmedia2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 76#SOIM

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Average lead costs vary by business model. As we saw earlier in this chapter, B2B companiesexperience higher overall average CPLs than their B2C peers. As a result, they are also more likelyto report that inbound marketing tactics, such as SEO and social media, lower their overall leadsourcing expenses – though 27% of B2B marketers indicate that email also produces belowaverage lead costs, signaling the continued health of that channel among business-centriccompanies.Marketers report a significant price disparity by industry. Among companies reporting aboveaverage lead costs, you can see in the Chapter Two Appendix that technology firms affirm tradeshows have a very high comparative CPL compared with other business models. Technologycompanies looking for low-cost leads would probably do well to avoid their booths.Some Marketers Split on Social Media, SEO Lead CostsWhile the overall lead pricing for both social media and SEO is extremely positive, some marketersalso indicate that these channels generate above average lead costs. Shown in the appendix, 14%of marketers produce above average lead costs from others’ favorite channels.What does this mean? Realistically, it shows the nuances of this evolving inbound marketingindustry, which is much more complex than a simple data point. While overall, marketers indicatethat inbound marketing delivers twice as many low-cost leads as outbound marketing, somepractitioners still struggle to make their inbound numbers work.Increasing business efficiency means streamlining the tools marketers use to execute theirinbound marketing strategies. For example, to lower costs and improve efficiency, marketers couldopt for one end-to-end software tracking solution rather than purchasing separate bloggingsoftware, email nurturing service providers, and social media listening tools.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 77#SOIM

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5. What are the best leads? Lead conversion rates by channelWhile cost per lead is a leading indicator of how marketers are filling the sales funnel, even thelargest funnel in the world won’t help your business unless it delivers customers. The nextimportant question then becomes, how well do leads convert into actual sales?To find out the comparative rates at which marketing channels sent leads to sales, we askedmarketers to look at their total lead conversion and tell us the average percentage of leadsconverted to sales by channel.According to marketers, for 2013, SEO and social media continue to lead inbound marketingconversion rates, netting 15% and 13% above the average conversion rates in 2013.Q: What is the average percentage of leads your company converts to sales15%13%12%11%9%8%7% 7%0%2%4%6%8%10%12%14%16%Social Media, Search Net Above Average LeadConversion15% of marketers say SEO delivers above-average sales conversions2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 78#SOIM

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The 7% blog conversion rate is a little misleading. While a blog is considered a standalonechannel, the social media conversion rate includes multiple sources, including Facebook, Twitter,and LinkedIn, among others. As we will see in next section, blogs in fact produced a new customerfor 43% of marketers last year – no small feat.Because of its ability to specifically target an audience, we would expect PPC to continue toconvert leads at relatively high rate. The challenge for PPC marketers is not their ability to pull in anaudience but their ability to control costs. As Google AdWords became more popular, keywordprices exploded, making it difficult for smaller businesses to effectively compete to control theirpaid ad spending. In contrast, once marketers develop an effective threshold of content, inboundmarketing – which pulls an audience to you via organic search – is both more scalable and morecost-effective.Q: What percentage of your companys leads generated in the channels listed below convert tosales vs. your total lead conversion?0%2%4%6%8%10%12%14%16%18%SEO Produces Solid Annual Lead Conversions15% of SEO, 13% of social media leads converted at above-average rates in20132011201220132013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 79#SOIM

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Shown in the appendix, agency firms seem to have mastered social media conversions, with 17% ofagencies reporting above average social exchanges in 2013, which is 41% better than the rest ofthe industry.Defining Email LeadsAs we discussed in the Introduction, deployed as part of an opt-in nurturing strategy, emailmarketing is evolving to incorporate the inbound marketing methodology. As a consequence,some of the 27% of low-cost email leads marketers produced this year were generated usinginbound techniques –making it slightly difficult to clearly bucket low-cost leads.Our research shows quite a bit of evidence that email is growing more inbound over time. Lastyear, only 27% of marketers bought an email list – meaning, presumably, that the remaining two-thirds of marketers generated their email lists organically via inbound techniques.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 80#SOIM

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6. Where do customers come from? Customer acquisition rates by channelClosing out our analysis of lead generation, the final step is to drill down on the top social mediaplatforms that delivered customers in 2013.Because social media delivers 14% of all leads and 13% of all customers – and is one of the most“famous” lead generation sources – we wanted to identify which specific channels producecustomers in 2013. To that end, we asked marketers if their company acquired a lead from any ofthe top social media channels. For comparison’s sake, we also included customers generated bythe company blog.Q: Has your company ever acquired a customer using a lead from the following sources?As you can see in the chart above, Facebook leads social media customer sources; more than52% of marketers will find a customer on Facebook this year. The company blog and LinkedIn tiefor second place, with 43% of marketers breeding customers in each of these respective channels.Twitter also records strong customer delivery potential, with more than 36% of marketers52%43% 43%36%15%9%0%10%20%30%40%50%60%Facebook LinkedIn CompanyBlogTwitter Google+ PinterestFacebook Top Channel to Acquire a Customer52% of all marketers found a customer via Facebook in 20132013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 81#SOIM

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producing a customer by regularly tweeting this year. Rounding out the social media customerresources are Google+, with 15% of marketers finding a customer on this relatively new channel,and 9% of Pinterest fans identifying a customer via pin boards.Blog Success Requires DedicationThe frequency with which marketers execute their social media strategies has a major impact onhow likely it is they will acquire a customer in that channel. This is most prevalent in our blog data.As we covered in the last section, the more regularly you commit to blogging, the better yourchance you have of finding a customer there. In fact, 82% of marketers who blog on a daily basisacquire a customer using their blog, as opposed to 57% of marketers who just blog monthly – stillan impressive statistic!75%82%71%67%57%14%10%14%21%25%0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%90%Multiple times/dayDaily 2-3 times/week Weekly MonthConsistent Blogging Boosts Inbound ROI82% of marketers who blog daily report positive ROI for overallinbound eﬀortsYesNo2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 82#SOIM

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The Social Media Magnifier EffectThough it is arguably their most important function, social media platforms are not just good forproducing new customers. Social media outreach also has a multiplier effect on your overallwebsite reach.The best way to understand this social media magnification is to imagine a hub-and-spoke modelof digital marketing to explain how leads are funneled from satellite channels, such as the blog orsocial media platforms, to your website. Once you draw traffic to your company site, you can thendesign a conversion process aimed at delivering on your final conversion goal. Social media is oneof the critical “spokes” in this hub-and-spoke architecture. (We will cover more about websiteconversion in Chapter Three.)Not only does regular social media engagement generate direct leads, it increases website traffic.As you can see in our customer data, companies that generate more than 1,000 Facebook likesalso enjoy nearly 1,400 website visits a day. Similarly, as you can see in the appendix data,HubSpot customers with over 1,000 Twitter followers generate more than 800 new website visitorsa month.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 83#SOIM

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Q: Which sources of leads have become MORE important to your company over the last 6months?Given this data, it’s easy to see why 21% of marketers report that social media has become moreimportant to their company over the past six months, whereas 17% of marketers (shown in theChapter Two Appendix) indicate that traditional marketing has become less important over thepast six months.0%5%10%15%20%25%30%Social Media, SEO Channels Become More Criticalin 201321% say social media grew more important in the past six months2011201220132013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 84#SOIM

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7. What will marketers spend on inbound this year? Tracking 2013 inboundmarketing budgetsAll of 2012 was inbound marketing, too – we just have more budget in 2013.- Marketer insight2013 State of Inbound Marketing SurveyWhile overall budget growth has flattened slightly, we are still in a major inbound marketing budgetgrowth spurt. As the industry matures and inbound marketing takes up a larger proportion ofmarketers’ overall budgets, we would expect growth to slow a bit – which is why there’s a slightuptick this year. Even more encouraging is why budgets are rising. Forty-one percent of marketersincreased their budgets this year as a result of past success of inbound strategy.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 85#SOIM

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Q: Specific to inbound marketing, how does your companys 2013 budget compare to the 2012budget?While overall budget growth has flattened slightly, we are still in a major inbound marketing budgetgrowth spurt. As the industry matures and inbound marketing takes up a larger proportion ofmarketers’ overall budgets, we would expect growth to slow a bit – which is why there’s a slightuptick this year. Even more encouraging is why budgets are rising. Forty-one percent of marketersincreased their budgets this year as a result of past success of inbound strategy.49%9%28%14%Inbound Marketing Budgets on the RiseNearly 50% of marketers increased their inbound budgets for 2013HigherLowerNo ChangeDont know/not applicable2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 86#SOIM

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Q: Specific to inbound marketing, how does your companys 2013 budget compare to the 2012budget?Looking at annual budgets, it’s an exciting time to be an inbound marketer, as the industry isclearly enjoying a funding growth spurt – nearly half of all companies increased their inboundbudgets in each of the past three years.Looking into our segment information, 53% of CEOs and CMOs increased their 2013 inboundmarketing budgets, which outpaces even the strong average industry growth.Oddly, large companies fall behind the growth in inbound, despite having the most to gain byinbound marketing given their already high overhead. Just 41% of firms with more than 200 peoplegrew their inbound marketing budgets this year – a rate 17% lower than their peers.One potential hazard to all this inbound growth is the ROI analytics shadow hanging over somenew inbound marketing heads. The dynamic pace of inbound growth means more and moreresources have been allocated to inbound strategies. However, it also means that marketers need54%11%35%47%11%42%48%9%28%0%10%20%30%40%50%60%Higher Lower No ChangeAnnual Inbound Marketing Budget Growth Remains Strong48% of marketers increased their 2013 budget2011201220132013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 87#SOIM

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to tie up all their analytics loose ends. If executives do not see clear results linked to inbound ROI– which will admittedly be difficult for the 33% of marketers who are unable to calculate inboundROI this year – budgets will inevitably drop off in the coming years.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 88#SOIM

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8. How do inbound budgets measure up? Inbound vs. outbound budgetsKeeping with this financial exploration, we also wanted to assess how marketers are allocatingtheir inbound budgets vs. their outbound budgets.We asked marketers to detail their average expenditures by channel. From there, we comparedthese spending trends for inbound marketing tactics – such as blogging, social media, and SEO –with the average spending for traditionally outbound tactics – such as trade shows, direct mail,telemarketing, and, this year, traditional advertising.For the last several years, marketing budgets saw inbound spending significantly outpacingoutbound budgets, with the gap between inbound and outbound spending growing 33% in 2012.This year, the inbound vs. outbound delta remained relatively consistent. Today, marketersallocate 34% of their overall budgets to inbound tactics – 11% more than they dedicate to outboundstrategies, such as banners, PPC, and other tactics.Q: Specific to inbound marketing, how does your companys 2013 budget compare to the 2012budget?24% 23% 23%32%35% 34%0%5%10%15%20%25%30%35%40%2011 2012 2013Inbound Marketing Budget Growth Remains StrongMarketers allocate 34% of overall budgets to inbound tacticsOutboundInbound2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 89#SOIM

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Similarly, the chart below shows inbound marketing budgets over the past five years, teased outby primary channel. You can see that blogging and social media have enjoyed consistently strongannual growth, with 23% of marketers investing in these channels this year, a 9% increase from2012.Q: Specific to inbound marketing, how does your companys 2013 budget compare to the 2012budget?Interestingly, after four straight years of relatively consistent SEO outlays, search engine allocationsdropped 3% this year to 11% of marketers’ overall budgets. Again, this decline is likely attributed tomarketers allocating more resources to developing quality content, rather than a dramatic declinein focus on SEO. In fact, as we discussed earlier, SEO is one of the top lead generation sources,with 25% of marketers finding the channel produces below average CPLs this year.00.050.10.150.20.252009 2010 2011 2012 2013Blogs, Social Media Lead Inbound MarketingOutlaysMarketers Spend 23% of overall budgets on blogging and social mediaSEO2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 90#SOIM

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Q: Specific to inbound marketing, how does your companys 2013 budget compare to the 2012budget?The chart below depicts outbound spending for just trade shows, direct mail, and telemarketingsince 2009. As you can see, outbound budgets continue their annual decline, amounting to just23% of all marketing spending in 2013.00.020.040.060.080.10.120.142009 2010 2011 2012 2013Outbound Budgets ShrinkingMarketers spend less than 1/3 of total budgets on outbound lead genTelemarketingTrade ShowsDirect Mail2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 91#SOIM

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9. What influences budget strategy? Factors swaying 2013 budget changesWe want to move where the market is going, not just where it has been.- Marketer insight2013 State of Inbound Marketing SurveyWhile reviewing pure budget numbers offers a lot of insight, we also wanted to hear the reasonsbehind marketers’ budget changes. So we asked marketers what drove their decisions to changetheir 2013 budget from last years’ levels.Q: What drove the decision to change your 2013 inbound marketing budget from the 2012budget?41%23%14%11%6%0%5%10%15%20%25%30%35%40%45%Past success withinbound marketingEconomy Change inmanagementOther: PleasedescribePast success withoutboundmarketingPast Inbound Marketing Success DeterminingFactor for 2013 Budget AdjustmentsInbounds proven success was the primacy rationale for 41% of 2013budget changes2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 92#SOIM

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The survey results show that inbound produced a lot of marketing champions in the past year. Infact, 41% of all marketers who changed their budgets last year did so because of past success withinbound marketing. Another 23% of companies cite the economy for budget adjustments, and 14%indicate their budgets shifted because of a change in management.The chart below depicts the top four reasons why marketers increased their budgets year-to-year.As you can see, past success at inbound marketing continues to dramatically outpace any otherrationale – in fact, inbound success is a full 150% more likely to drive inbound budget increasesthan improvements in the economy, at 23% of all justifications.While past success is clearly driving more inbound investment, this rate is a dramatic 20% lowerthan last year. Tripling our respondent pool seems to have increased the pool of marketersconfused by inbound budgeting, because we had many more “don’t know” responses this yearthan in previous survey editions.Q: What drove the decision to change your 2013 inbound marketing budget from the 2012budget?48%21%14% 14%54%18% 17%11%46%18%13%12%0%10%20%30%40%50%60%Past success with Inbound Economy Change in Management OtherInbound Success Continues to Drive 2013 BudgetIncreasesWhile slowing, Inbound success continues to drive budget increasesyear-to-year2011201220132013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 93#SOIM

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Further cementing the decline of outbound marketing strategies, only 6% of marketers reportsuccess with outbound as the reason they changed their budget in 2013.Signaling a slight positive turn for long-term business futures, while 54% of marketers blame theeconomy as a key reason to reduce their inbound budgets, this was a 9% drop from last year,when 62% of marketers decreased budget spending based on outside pressures, which was itselfan improvement over 67% in 2011.Looking at budget ratings by business model, success with inbound marketing nets a significantboost among B2B firms, with 45% indicating positive ROI as the reason to grow their inboundbudgets. Conversely, the economy nets a more sizeable impact on B2C spending, with nearly one-third indicating the changing economic environment was the primary driver for budget changes in2013.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 94#SOIM

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10. What numbers to track? Evaluating inbound marketing dataFinally, to accurately determine if inbound marketing is worth the effort, we need to understandhow marketers are measuring their success.Digital marketing has been a boon for data-driven marketers because everything we do online canbe measured. As a consequence, marketers have become more accountable for justifying theirresults. At HubSpot, we measure our success against monthly leads goals on a daily basis.However, as we have seen in our survey data, 34% of marketers still struggle to prove the ROI oftheir inbound activities.At the heart of this problem could be the sheer volume of metrics that are now measurable viainbound marketing analytics. Buried in data reports, some marketers may be hard pressed topinpoint which data and reporting will build their credibility and which metrics don’t really matter totheir CEO and CFOs. Telling your board your burning desire to improve your brand awareness –without linking that awareness to a concrete data point – is likely to be met with blank stares atyour next quarterly meeting.Mike Roberge, HubSpot’s head of sales, recommended that we ask marketers how they evaluatetheir success, to see how well it aligned with sales’ metrics. This netted some interesting results.Some marketers are clearly dedicated to tracking the “hard numbers” that matter to executives. Asyou can see in the chart below, 15% of marketers tie their inbound results directly to eithercompany revenue or customers/wins generated. Similarly, total leads generated and qualifiedleads generated produced another 13% and 12% of success metrics, respectively.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 95#SOIM

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Q: How is your marketing teams success evaluated?This kind of flat bar chart – with no clear winner and many equally weighted data points – tells astory of industry-wide confusion over what data measurements really matter when trackinginbound marketing. Industry-wide, marketers seem to have extremely disparate methods ofmeasuring their achievements, including the 4% of marketers who note that different stakeholdersmeasure success based on different data points.This lack of one easy-to-cite data point for proof that inbound marketing is “working” is probably amajor factor influencing the 34% of marketers who can’t measure their inbound ROI this year.Predictably, executive respondents to our survey focus more on numbers that directly impact ROI,including 17% who measure revenue, and 16% who look at customers or wins. Want to get ready for15% 15%14%13%12% 12%9%4%0%2%4%6%8%10%12%14%16%18%Revenue, Customers Key Inbound MarketingMetrics15% of marketers track revenue or wins, followed by traﬃc and leads2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 96#SOIM

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the next meeting with your executive team? Make sure you know how much your inboundmarketing efforts have contributed to your company’s overall revenue.Total customers and wins slightly outpace revenue as the top achievement measurement amonginternational inbound marketers. While they both net 15% of the population, slightly moreinternational marketers rely on total customers than final revenue numbers.Looking at analytics by industry shows a wide array of tracking goals, with retail and nonprofitcompanies highlighting site traffic and marketing agencies paying closer attention to customeracquisitions.Again, these disparities point to general confusion as to what is the correct top metric. One write-in comment effectively captured the industry’s confusion over what data points really matter. Themarketer said, the top metric “seems to be our manager’s opinion.” In truth, there are goodarguments to be made for a number of data points as the “right success” metric, but, to eliminateconfusion, it’s clear that inbound marketing needs to both simplify and clarify what we mean bysuccess.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 97#SOIM

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Q: Did inbound marketing demonstrate ROI for your company?Q: Does your company publish a blog?41%15%36%8%0%5%10%15%20%25%30%35%40%45%Yes No Could not or did notcalculate ROIDont know/notapplicableCEOs Perception of Marketing ROI Tracks Industry Trends41% of CEOs report inbound delivered ROI, though 15% still notconvinced62%34%0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%Yes NoBlogging Remains a Key Inbound Element62% of marketers published a blog in 20132013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 99#SOIM

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Chart: HubSpot Customers Who Blog See Dramatic Lead GrowthMarketers with more than 15 posts per month average 1,200 new leads per month2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 100#SOIM

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2. Where do we get leads? Inbound vs. outbound lead sources and costsQ: What percentage of your companys leads come from each of the following sources?14% 14%13%8% 8%7%6% 6% 6%0%2%4%6%8%10%12%14%16%Inbound Marketing Dominates Marketers TopLead SourcesSocial media, SEO each produce 14% of all marketing leads2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 101#SOIM

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3. What is a lead worth? Marketers rate average costs-per-leadQ: Please estimate your companys cost per lead for each of the channels listed below vs. youroverall average cost per lead.16%14% 14%12%12% 12%11%9%8%0%2%4%6%8%10%12%14%16%18%Trade Shows Top Average Cost per lead Numbers16% of marketers see high CPLs from trade shows, followed by 14%from SEO and search strategies2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 102#SOIM

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Q: Please estimate your companys cost per lead for each of the channels listed below vs. youroverall average cost per lead.B2B and B2C Marketers Report Inbound Reduces Average CPLBoth B2B and B2C firms found social, SEO, email reduce average lead cost0%5%10%15%20%25%30%35%B2BB2CB2B&B2C2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 103#SOIM

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Q: Please estimate your companys cost per lead for each of the channels listed below vs. youroverall average cost per lead.0%5%10%15%20%25%30%35%Above Average Costs per Lead Vary Widely byIndustry28% of tech ﬁrms report trade shows top out CPLsOverallAgencyNonproﬁtTech (Software)2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 104#SOIM

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4. What are the best leads? Lead conversion rates by channelQ: What percentage of your companys leads generated in the channels listed below convert tosales vs. your total lead conversion?0%5%10%15%20%25%30%35%Agencies Lead Increase for Social Media, Email Conversions17% of agency social media leads convert to salesOverallAgencyNonproﬁtTech (Software)2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 105#SOIM

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Q: Which sources of leads have become LESS important to your company over the last sixmonths?0%5%10%15%20%25%30%Interruption Marketing Losing Market ShareTraditional advertising, direct cede more ground in 20132011201220132013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 107#SOIM

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The third chapter reviews the core optimization techniques, campaign testing andtechnology you need to execute inbound marketing, as well as how to set leadscores and benchmark website conversion goals.The Marketers’ Case for Adopting InboundTesting, Tactics, and TechnologyCHAPTER 3 WHY DO INBOUND?2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 114

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Chapter Three: How to Do Inbound Marketing: Critical Optimization,Testing, and Technology ConsiderationsInbound involves a number of moving parts. First, you need to understand inbound marketing’sguiding framework, which we reviewed in the Introduction. Then you need to understand how allthe possible inbound processes work together to deliver at the top of your funnel. In Chapter Two,we reviewed the most cost-effective channels for generating leads.In Chapter Three, we will learn to approach these channels strategically, and review the coreoptimization design, technology, and testing tools you need to execute inbound marketing.This chapter covers how to set lead scores and website conversion goals. We also explore thebenefits of testing your inbound techniques, cover the frequency with which marketers aredeploying testing campaigns, and look at the inbound industry’s current technology challengesand software trends.Chapter Three topics include:1. What is a lead worth? 2013 lead scoring deployment2. How does your website measure up? Average website conversion rates3. Who is testing? Marketers reveal 2013 testing practices4. How often should you test? Optimizing inbound marketing5. What are marketers’ technology pain points? Technology challenges in 20136. What are the must-have inbound tools? Marketers’ 2013 inbound software menuKey discoveries• Marketers report lead scoring is critical to their inbound approach: Sixty-seven percent ofmarketers rate lead scoring important to their strategic success. Further, 72% of C-levelmarketers responding to the 2013 State of Inbound Marketing survey consider lead scoringimportant to achieving marketing goals.• Inbound concepts boost total website lead conversion rates: Inbound marketers doublethe average site conversion rate of non-inbound marketers, from 6% to 12% total. Marketerssee an average website conversion rate of 10% industry-wide.• Testing inbound efforts propels ROI improvements: Companies who test are 75% morelikely to show ROI for inbound marketing than those who fail to test their strategies.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 116#SOIM

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• Very few marketers commit to regular testing: Forty-five percent of marketers do not testtheir efforts, and 21% do not know if they test or not, which means that over two-thirds of allinbound strategies will not be effectively tested in 2013. Of those who do test, just 3% ofinbound marketers test all the time, and 28% indicate they test less than monthly. However,51% of executives report testing at least monthly to improve inbound results.• Free analytics solutions rule the industry: Forty-six percent of marketers use GoogleAnalytics’ free reporting. This lack of true inbound tracking is likely a key impact on ROImeasurement challenges because 18% of marketers report finding tools to accuratelymeasure ROI as a major challenge of their technology systems.What to do with these lessons:1. Optimize your website: While a 2% difference in conversion rate between inboundmarketing and the 10% overall industry average may not seem like a lot, for an ecommercesite doing $200,000 in business a month, boosting online conversions by 2% results in a$40,000 delta for that firm’s bottom line.2. Define what a lead is worth: Setting up scoring mechanisms can be somewhat complex.Though they require strategic thinking and lead management software, lead grades canalso provide invaluable information about a lead’s worth to your company – andconsequently, how inbound has measurably produced ROI.3. Test! And map out a formal testing strategy while you’re at it: Testing eliminateshypothetical discussions about how your audience will respond to different content, emailcampaigns, or landing page elements, and it replaces them with hard evidence on wherevisitors actually click on your pages and what copy actually converts leads.4. Make sure your technology can support your business goals: Lofty inbound resultsrequire technical capabilities. Ensure your marketing team is armed with every technologyor tool it may need to accomplish business goals, including content management anddistribution tools, analytics tracking, social media monitoring tools, and testing capabilities.Similarly, allow marketers to become more fluent in the technical aspects of digitalmarketing by offering either explicit IT support or educational opportunities.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 117#SOIM

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1. What is a lead worth? 2013 lead scoring deploymentWe spent the bulk of Chapter Two explaining how inbound helps marketers attract high volumesof leads. Sure, HubSpot customers may have produced more than 9,100 leads in 15 months, butinevitably, some of these leads will be much more likely to convert than others. The challenge formany marketers is trying to separate good, quality leads from the rest of this new traffic.Inbound marketers are solving this lead assessment problem by turning to lead scoring or someversion of this philosophy. Lead scoring attaches values to each of your leads based on theinformation in their lead forms and online behavior.Setting up scoring mechanisms can be somewhat complex. Though they require strategic thinkingand lead management software, lead grades can also provide invaluable information regardingwhat a lead is worth to your company – and consequently, how inbound has measurably producedROI.We wanted to assess the sophistication of marketers’ current lead scoring strategies, so we askedthem how important they consider lead scoring to their overall marketing goals.According to the chart below, marketers have clearly embraced the promise of lead scoring.Among marketers who have implemented inbound marketing, 34% consider lead scoring veryimportant and another one-third note this strategy is somewhat important.Q: How important is lead scoring to your marketing strategy?67%14%0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%Very important and somewhat important Somewhat unimportant and not importantScoring Leads Important to Inbound67% of marketers rate lead scoring important to strategic success2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 118#SOIM

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As with any data-driven metrics, marketing executives are fans of lead scoring strategies. Seventy-two percent of C-level marketers responding to the 2013 State of Inbound Marketing surveyconsider lead scoring important to achieving marketing goals.Lead scoring ranks even higher among international marketers, perhaps because of their disparateaudience pools; 75% of international marketers rate lead scoring as at least somewhat important tomarketing strategy, and 41% find lead scoring very important.Remember: the value of your lead score is only as good as the inputs you use to calculate thatscore. At HubSpot, we recommend using personas to sort and understand your prospect base.Personas are robust, semi-fictionalized representations of your ideal customers. By developingthese profiles, you can gain insight into how best to speak to and otherwise target your coreaudience. When considering our own HubSpot lead evaluation, we know that our core personasconvert at different rates. We assign correspondingly different values to leads from each of ourcore persona subsets, which helps us better estimate our overall lead closing rates.Your lead scores will evolve over time. To launch a lead scoring model, you need to definepreliminary values, but remember to revisit your lead tracking on a regular basis to adjust yourtargets as your understanding of your total funnel conversion evolves.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 119#SOIM

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2. How does your website measure up? Average website conversion ratesHave you been looking for that secret formula to lift your conversion rates?Sorry, but this report shows that inbound marketers who focus on developingcontent that meets their customers need and invest in doing so for the longterm nearly double their conversion rate. As they continue to keep rolling outquality content over time that conversion rate will continue to rise. Just as JeffBezos, the CEO of Amazon has proven in ecommerce, Hubspot shows in thisreport that conversion rates are a long term, customer driven exercise.Bryan Eisenberg, PartnerEisenberg Holdingshttp://www.bryaneisenberg.com/ @TheGrokYour website is the hub of all marketing efforts. All of your email, social media, and back-end SEOmagic will ultimately point your audience to a page on your website to convert. As a consequence,your website conversion rate – how effectively your website does what you want it to do – is amajor factor in determining your digital marketing success.You may have exceptional content and a killer strategy, but if your website is confusing, you willnever achieve your inbound marketing goals.There are myriad factors that contribute to website conversion rates. In fact, many websiteconversion experts shy away from quoting industry averages because they vary so significantly bybusiness, target customer base, the type of page you measure, and even how you define awebsite “conversion.” As a result, comparing website conversion rates is a little like comparingrunning times between people in the 100-meter dash and the mile.We also know, however, that marketers – and especially executives – like benchmarks, so weasked marketers to estimate their average website conversion rate. For the purpose of this report,we couched website conversion more generally, as a company’s ability to convert overall leadsusing their website.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 120#SOIM

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According to the 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report, marketers see an average websiteconversion rate of 10% industry-wide. Given the short attention span of most readers online, thisconversion rate is actually a bit surprising, but it bodes extremely well for the future success ofonline marketing.Q: To the best of your ability, please write your companys following average website conversionrateMarketers who have implemented inbound marketing strategies see even greater websiteconversion rates than this industry average, and they reach almost double the conversion rate ofnon-inbound marketers, from 6% to 12%. While a 2% difference between inbound marketers andthe 10% overall industry average may not seem like a lot, for an ecommerce site doing $200,000in business a month, boosting online conversions by 2% results in a $40,000 delta for its bottomline.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 121#SOIM

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Q: To the best of your ability, please write your companys following average website conversionratWebsites for small businesses experience slightly below average conversion rates, with just an 8%rate. Similarly, large enterprise companies report somewhat suboptimal results, at 9.9% averageconversions.While both these groups see below average site conversions, the reasons behind these dips arevery different. For small companies, a lack of resources for improving and testing websites likelyreduces overall results. At the opposite end of the spectrum, large companies – with a variety ofbusiness units – often suffer from confusion over both the ultimate business objective for thewebsite and competition for real estate on company homepages. This confusion can translate toan unclear website, which does not convert well.Overall, the boost to website conversion rates is great news for inbound marketers, especiallywhen you look at HubSpot customer data, which indicated that companies implementing inboundmarketing managed to double their average website traffic in less than a year and a half.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 122#SOIM

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If companies that grew their average traffic from 800 customers to 1,700 also doubled theirconversion rates, they would see an exponential increase in their online marketing performance.No wonder marketers are increasing their inbound budgets by nearly 50% this year. Who istesting? Marketers reveal 2013 testing practicesOne of the best ways to improve inbound marketing results is to test your marketing campaigns.You can spend days or weeks planning and designing the perfect content piece or landing page,but testing and analytics are the only ways to determine if it actually works.A great conversion rate tells you simply how well a piece of content or site performs today, but youneed to put context around it. Testing helps to identify that content piece’s hidden potential,making your inbound channels and content tools work as hard as you do. Testing also eliminateshypothetical discussions about how your audience will respond to different content, emailcampaigns, or landing page elements, and it replaces them with hard evidence on where visitorsactually click on your pages and what copy actually converts leads.We wanted to know how many marketers were actually implementing end-to-end inboundmarketing, so we asked them what kind of testing strategies their company uses to support theirmarketing efforts.0 08008819551009105311241191 12291317145615561658177702004006008001000120014001600180020001 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15NumberofVisitorsTime in MonthsSite Visitor Growth Dramatically Rises for HubSpotCustomersUsing HubSpot software, customers see nearly 2000 website visits amonthVisitors overtime forcustomers with800 visitors instarting month2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 123#SOIM

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Q: What kind of testing does your company use to support your marketing efforts?As you can see in the chart above, 45% of marketers do not test their efforts, and 21% do not knowif they test or not, which means that over two-thirds of all inbound strategies will not be effectivelytested in 2013.Among marketers who test, A/B testing is the clear winner, with 20% of marketers implementing apure A/B test and an additional 10% combining testing strategies in 2013. Pure multivariate testing,in which marketers test multiple variables at once, accounts for just 3.3% of all inbound marketingtesting. This number is not surprising given the high volume of traffic and expertise required toimplement these types of tests.Marketing agencies, which have been ahead of the curve for most inbound marketing tactics, areslightly more advanced in their testing practices, with nearly half (49%) implementing some form ofinbound testing this year.20%3%10%45%0%20%40%60%80%100%A/B testing Multivariate testing A/B testing andmultivariate testingWe do not testTesting Largely Ignored by Marketers66% of marketers do not test their inbound tactics2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 124#SOIM

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Q: Does inbound marketing demonstrate ROI?Why are we such advocates for testing? Very simply: It works! Companies that test are 75% morelikely to show ROI for inbound marketing than those that fail to test their strategiesWhile testing requires some technical expertise, which can certainly be intimidating for somemarketers, most inbound marketing software makes testing relatively painless by funneling emailinto A/B testing alternatives and calculating statistical validity.36%5%17%32%20%4%14%38%0%5%10%15%20%25%30%35%40%A/B testingMultivariate testing$A/B testing and multivariate testingWe do not testA/B Testing Improves Bottom-Line PerformanceMarketers conducting A/B tests 80% more likely to show inbound ROIYesNo2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 125#SOIM

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3. How often should you test? Industry standards for testingIn addition to teasing out who is testing, it’s valuable to detail how often marketers are testing.For testing to deliver consistent bottom-line improvements, it can’t be a standalone event. Effectivetesting requires a continual, iterative process, in which each lesson builds on previous ones toprovide more insight into your customer base. While conducting one-off tests on differentmarketing components is possible (e.g. a single product page or new CTA button), it is far moreeffective to map out a formal, long-term testing strategy.Ongoing testing tells your company what you don’t know and allows your company to makebusiness decisions based on facts, not opinions. It’s this clear business intelligence that will allowyour company to maximize inbound marketing’s potential gains.We wanted to identify how many marketers have fused a culture of testing into the DNA of theirinbound marketing strategies, so we asked marketers who test how frequently they use A/Btesting or multivariate testing strategies.As you can see in the chart below, very few – just 3% of inbound marketers – test all the time.While continual testing is obviously ideal, we also know it’s probably unrealistic for most resource-strapped marketing teams.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 126#SOIM

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Q: How frequently do you use A/B testing and/or multivariate testing?Just over 36% of marketers in the 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Survey report monthly testingrates, and an additional 28% indicate they test less frequently than that. While monthly tests willcertainly improve campaigns more than no testing at all, it’s clear that marketers can do a lot moreto capitalize on testing’s ability to drive bottom-line improvements.For marketers sold on the promise of testing, a lack of manpower, technology, and expertise canprevent some marketers from executing testing goals. For many others, testing may be more of amental block than a physical one. However, email and inbound marketing software, especially atthe enterprise level, often includes A/B testing capabilities and will even calculate your test’sstatistical significance.Our CEO and CMO respondents were particular fans of regular testing, with 51% of executivesindicating they test to improve their inbound results on a monthly basis. Anything that marketerscan do to eliminate the guess work in deciding campaign strategies is usually popular amongexecutives.3%6% 7%18%36%28%0%20%40%60%80%100%Multiple times adayDaily 2-3 times aweekWeekly Monthly Less thanmonthlyMarketers Primarily Support Monthly Testing36% of marketers testing inbound strategies roll out variations monthly2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 127#SOIM

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4. What are marketers’ technology pain points? Technology challenges in2013In Chapter One, we alluded to a traditional marketing-IT divide. While this is occasionally astereotype, many companies face very real challenges managing their disparate technologyresources – from successfully building and launching landing pages onto their websites to forcingtheir CRM systems to “talk” to their email tools, among other obstacles. Often, marketers may alsoface language and prioritization barriers that prevent them from effectively working with their ITteams.Inbound marketing requires reporting across multiple channels and integrating outreach efforts,including the blog, social media, and organic website traffic. Marketers without end-to-endtechnology solutions are forced to rely on their IT teams to string together various delivery andreporting systems, which is another factor inhibiting clear ROI reporting.Customers don’t really care about our internal cross-functional issues. They care about whetherthey can easily find the information or content they want. With this in mind, businesses need toidentify and address these technology issues to ensure seamless, remarkable experiences everytime the customer interacts with their online footprint.To get a handle on current technology challenges, we asked what major issues marketers facewhen using their existing technology solutions.Q: Which of the following statements, if any, describe the major challenges your company faces inusing your marketing technology solutions?2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 128#SOIM

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In keeping with our theme of measuring ROI, 18% of marketers indicate that their top challenge isdetermining which systems, analytics, and tools can best gauge ROI. Among executives, trackingthe ROI in analytics becomes even more important, with 20% of C-suite marketers indicating thatgauging ROI is their principle technology concern.Rounding out the top five challenges are 15% of marketers concerned with managing data; 14%struggling to secure executive support or budgets; 11% working to improve team training; and 10%unable to get various systems to “talk” to one another.It will be interesting to watch marketers’ awareness levels of data-cleanliness and storage over thenext several years to see if it moves in light of the impending big data crisis.6%8%9%10%11%14%15%18%Allocating bandwidthGetting team using the sametoolsEnsuring ﬂexibility in ourCRM/ReportingGetting systems to talkTraining our teamSecuring executive support/budgetTracking our dataFinding tools to guage ROIROI Measurement, Data Cleanliness Key TechChallenges18% of marketers report identifying ROI tracking systems a primarychallenge2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 129#SOIM

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5. What are the must-have inbound tools? Marketers’ 2013 inbound softwaremenuNew technologies (mobile devices of all shapes and sizes and location-basedservices) will continue to grow, but the best marketers will realize its notabout how to jam more ads into new platforms – its about how to use thenew technologies to enhance your inbound powers of attraction.- Dharmesh ShahCTO of HubSpotIn 2012, we witnessed many technology acquisitions, from IPOs, private rounds of funding, and theemergence of new startups. As a part of HubSpot’s 2013 predictions on inbound marketing, weanticipated more investment in technology solutions to improve inbound execution, social mediamanagement, marketing measurement, and ROI attribution – which would be a blessing for the18% of marketers challenged to identify the ROI of their inbound efforts.To understand the current technology software landscape, we asked marketers what softwarethey use on a regular basis. As you can see in the chart below (which graphs any software nettinga 1% overall response rate), the free Google Analytics leads the pack by a landslide, with 46% ofmarketers using that software this year.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 130#SOIM

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Q: What marketing software does your company use?While the adoption of HubSpot software looks like it has declined slightly over the past threeyears, don’t worry; the company is doing just fine – in fact, we grew by 82% this year!By tripling our survey sample size this year, we changed the number of HubSpot customerssurveyed and were able to provide a more accurate data set for this report. Less than 10% of thissurvey sample is colored by experiences at HubSpot, which makes marketers more likely toprovide an unbiased opinion of what is happening in the broader inbound marketing community.It’s interesting to note that B2B companies were 83% more likely to have implemented HubSpotsoftware than were B2C firms. While a clear concept of a lead is one of the primary determiningfactors of a good inbound marketing customer – which is innately the B2B model – there are manyB2C companies that should consider looking into inbound marketing strategies via HubSpot oranother tool.0%5%10%15%20%25%30%35%40%45%50%Google Analytics Tops Marketers SoftwareResources46% of marketers used Google Analytics in 20132011201220132013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 131#SOIM

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Q: What marketing software does your company use?As PPC campaigns become more mature and expensive, B2C companies will need to identify newtools to grow their customer base organically. B2C firms that get ahead of the curve by adopting amodel fueled by content and customer personas (i.e. “context”) and by coupling it with landingpage optimization and testing best practices will enjoy a keen advantage over their peers whohave missed this tectonic business shift.0%5%10%15%20%25%30%35%40%45%50%Inbound Marketing Software More Prevalent AmongB2B MarketersB2B companies 83% more likely to deploy HubSpot than their B2CpeersB2BB2CB2B2C2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 132#SOIM

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Chapter Three Appendix1. What is a lead worth? 2013 lead scoring deploymentQ: How important is lead scoring to your marketing strategy39%32%4%6%18%0%5%10%15%20%25%30%35%40%45%Very important SomewhatimportantSomewhatunimportantNot important Don’t know/notapplicableExecs Say Lead Scoring Critical to ResultsScoring leads rated very important by 39% of CEOs2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 133#SOIM

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Q: How important is lead scoring to your marketing strategy41%34%5% 6%0%5%10%15%20%25%30%35%40%45%Very important Somewhat important SomewhatunimportantNot importantInternational Firms Lead Scoring PracticesOutpace Industry Average75% of international marketers report lead scoring somewhatimportant2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 134#SOIM

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2. How does your website measure up? Average website conversion ratesQ: To the best of your ability, please write your companys following average website conversionrate2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 135#SOIM

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3. Who is testing? Marketers reveal 2013 testing practicesQ: What kind of testing does your company use to support your marketing efforts?20%3%10%45%0%20%40%60%80%100%A/B testing Multivariate testing A/B testing andmultivariate testingWe do not testTesting Largely Ignored by Marketers66% of marketers do not test their inbound tactics2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 136#SOIM

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4. How often should you test? Industry standards for testingQ: How frequently do you use A/B testing and/or multivariate testing?0%8%5%15%51%21%0%10%20%30%40%50%60%Multiple times adayDaily 2-3 times aweekWeekly Monthly Less thanmonthlyCEOs Proponents of Monthly TestingMonthly tests the norm for 51% of executives who optimize their results2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 137#SOIM

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The ﬁnal chapter looks at key personnel decisions that allow marketers to builda world-class inbound marketing team. It identiﬁes how to best prioritize day-to-day activities and deploy resources in channels that best achieve their company’sannual business goals.Building a Successful Inbound Marketing TeamCHAPTER 4 WHO DOES INBOUND?2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 140

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Chapter Four Table of Contents1.2013 Full-Time Inbound Staﬃng2. Where do marketers spend their time?Dedicated Full-Time Marketers Per Channel3. Who is hiring?Estimated Inbound Marketing Team Growth in 20132013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 141

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Chapter Four: Who Does Inbound? Insights to Help Build a SuccessfulInbound Marketing TeamA marketing team’s most valuable asset is its people. To realize the dramatic lead generationpotential offered by inbound marketing, marketers need to discern how to best prioritize their day-to-day activities and deploy their resources in channels that best achieve their company’s annualbusiness goals.The final chapter of our 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report looks at key personnel decisionsthat will help you build a world-class inbound marketing team.Included in Chapter Four are sections on:1. Who should be on your team? 2013 full-time inbound staffing2. Where do marketers spend their time? Dedicated full-time marketers per channel3. Who is hiring? Estimated inbound marketing team growth in 2013Key discoveries• Marketers are working in very small teams: Eighty-one percent of all inbound teamscontain fewer than six people. This small team environment is pervasive at every level ofthe industry, as 31% of companies with 200+ employees still work in five-person teams orfewer.• Social media leads marketing staffing assignments: Social media staffs more full-timeemployees than any other team, with 16% of companies engaging a full-time social mediapractitioner.• Marketing also dedicating resources to content curation: Ten percent of companies havea dedicated content marketer, and 9% have either a full-time SEO expert or blog lead. Thisshows marketers’ clear commitment to developing content-rich inbound strategies.• Social, SEO and blogging produce resource-efficient leads: Forty-three percent ofmarketers generated a customer via their blog this year, though the blog requires roughly9% of marketers’ total full-time staff dedications and 7% of their total budget. With minimaltime allocation, blogs produce low-cost leads for 24% of the marketing community.• It’s a good economy to be an inbound marketer: While most marketing teams will begin2013 with five people or fewer, most will at least double by the end of the year. Inboundmarketers plan to hire an average of 9.3 people this year, which is 125% more growth than2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 142#SOIM

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teams not executing inbound marketing. Enterprise companies expect the most growth,expressing plans to hire an average 18.6 full-time marketers this year.What to do with these lessons:1. Get ready to hire: If you’re a manager or executive, think about your hiring practices – doyou have enough marketers to support your leads goals? Remember: your marketing teamneeds both the bandwidth and expertise to deliver the right kind of leads your businessneeds to support its growth goals. With this general shortage of inbound marketingexpertise, think about hiring someone who “gets” inbound – we expect them to be in shortsupply given marketers’ predicted hiring goals for 2013.2. Work smarter, not harder: If you currently work with a small team, or are unable to hire atthis moment, try to maximize your efforts. Repurposing content and finding technologytools and solutions to scale your workload are both smart ways to help ease a time-strapped workload.3. Focus on your content: Developing exceptional content is a key differentiating factor forinbound. To “do” inbound marketing, you need to create exceptional content.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 143#SOIM

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1. Who should be on your team? 2013 full-time inbound staffingThe fact that only a small percentage of marketers are focused on contentcreation is not surprising. It requires a significant amount of sweat equity andits often very bespoke. I expect this figure to rise over time as contentstrategy moves into greater focus, in part, because of the medias willingnessto feature it as the economics of their business shift dramatically due toprogrammatic buying.- Steve RubelChief Content Strategist, Edelmanhttp://edelman.comThe past five years have been hard on our economy and, consequently, on marketing headcounts.While the official “end” of the recent recession was roughly 2009, employment rates, always alagging economic indicator, are only just beginning to turn around.To find out how deeply the economy has affected inbound marketing bench strength, we askedhow many full-time marketers companies allocated to inbound for 2013.As you can see it the chart below, most teams continue to function with a minimal head count.Nearly 30% of marketers don’t even have one full-time marketer dedicated to inbound, and 51% ofmarketers rank between one and five inbound team members. Meanwhile, less than 5% ofcompanies responding to our 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Survey indicate they work ininbound marketing teams of more than 25 people.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 144#SOIM

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Q: How many full-time marketers does your company have?What does this mean? Inbound marketers are exhausted! Inbound marketing is a resource-intensive strategy, and our industry is juggling a vast amount of work – from developing whitepapers and regular blog posts, to social media outreach and research, to analytics tracking – withvery few team members.When we normalized the data by company size, we found that enterprise-level firms were, in fact,operating in even smaller relative teams than their peers.29%51%8%4% 5%0%10%20%30%40%50%60%Less than one 1-5 5-10 10-25 More than 25Inbound Marketing Teams Average One to FiveMembers51% of all inbound teams contain fewer than 6 people2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 145#SOIM

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Q: How many full-time marketers does your company have dedicated to inbound?67%70%65%51%33%0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%6-25 26-50 51-200 201-500 500+Enterprise Firms Report Comparatively SmallTeams31% of ﬁrms with 200+ employees still work in ﬁve-person teams% of companies with 1-5 fulltime marketers2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 146#SOIM

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As you can see in the chart above, 50% of companies with between 200 and 500 employeesexecute inbound marketing campaigns using teams of five or fewer people. While this percentagedrops to roughly one-third of companies with more than 500 employees, it is still a stunningly smallnumber of people executing inbound campaigns. No wonder these teams don’t have time to testmore than once a month!Some reports of comparatively small teams may be a result of our survey sample. Of companiesresponding to the 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Survey, 43% report they have between oneand five people in their total marketing teams, not just those dedicated expressly to inbound.Across the pond and beyond, international marketing teams follow similar staffing patterns, with50% of respondents indicating they work in small teams of between one and five people.Wed love to be able to do more inbound marketing, but resources areextremely tight, and we all wear several hats. As a result, our lead gen effortsare essentially lists, email marketing, and telemarketing.- Marketer insight2013 State of Inbound Marketing Survey2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 147#SOIM

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2. Where do marketers spend their time? Dedicated full-time marketers bychannelIn an ideal world, marketers would have unlimited time and teammates, which would allow them todedicate one person to each of their marketing channels. As we just established, however, evenlarge companies are executing their marketing campaigns with an average of five or fewer people.Given this resource strain, marketers have to make strategic decisions about which channelsreceive dedicated time and which channels they believe are more “nice to haves.”However, with inbound marketing adoption up and 48% of firms increasing marketing budgets for2013, we would expect that marketing teams would be experiencing a similar growth spurt. Tounderstand how best-in-class marketing teams were dividing and conquering marketing, we askedmarketers how many full-time staff members they allocate to each of the major channels.Industry-wide, social media and email marketers enjoy more full-time employees than any otherteams, with 16% of companies engaging a full-time social media maven and 11% paying a dedicatedemail marketer.Q: How does your company dedicate its full-time marketers to the following channels?4%5%6%6%6%9%9%10%11%16%PPC (paid search / AdWords)TelemarketingTraditional Marketing (radio, print, TV)Direct MailTrade ShowsBlogsSEO (organic search)Content marketingEmail MarketingSocial MediaSocial Media Consumes Most Personnel Resources16% of companies employ a full-time social media marketer2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 148#SOIM

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Moving down the inbound line, 10% of companies have a dedicated content marketer and 9% haveeither a full-time SEO expert or blog lead.Overall, 10% of marketing teams dedicate at least one full-time member purely on developingcontent. This, along with the 9% of firms employing at least one blogger – who, presumably, is alsogenerating significant content on a regular basis – is proof that marketers are committed toeffectively executing inbound strategies and understand the vital role that good content plays inmarketing today.As we have seen throughout this report, traditional advertising is declining industry-wide, asexecutives dedicate less budget and personnel over time. Still, traditional marketing roles have notcompletely disappeared. In fact, 6% of marketers continue to dedicate time exclusively on eachtrade shows, direct mail, and telemarketing.It is unclear whether these are the last holdouts of a dying business model or an indicator thatmarketers need to better integrate inbound efforts with more traditional marketing styles. Eitherway, it should be fun to watch how these staffing metrics change over time.It’s no secret that inbound marketing requires effort. It takes time to be a thought leader, betweendeveloping remarkable content, maintaining your social presence, and measuring results – nevermind optimizing or testing.Despite the perception that inbound marketing is “too hard,” we saw in Chapter Two’s review ofinbound marketing’s average lead generation and conversion rates that it is, in fact, efficient. Plus,traditional marketing is far from resource neutral. It takes a lot of time and effort to stand at aconference for a week, but you generate a lot less total traffic from these efforts. To survive as acompany, you have to bring in leads, and inbound marketing is twice as effective as traditionaloutbound strategies at doing just that.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 149#SOIM

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Q: How does your company dedicate its full-time marketers to the following channels?The chart above looks at both the time and budget marketers allocate to their various strategies.Clearly, maintaining a regular social media presence takes some dedication, but it also requiresless budget influx than other marketing tactics. Further, the 16% of marketers who dedicate theirtime to social media in 2013 will also deliver the highest proportion of leads, at 14%.Similarly, while blogs require roughly 9% of marketers’ total full-time staff dedications, they alsodemand just 7% of marketers’ total budget outlay this year. This chart looks terrific when youconsider 43% of marketers generated a customer via their blog with less than 10% of total timeallocation.6% 6%11%5%19%16%9%4%6%8% 8%13%6% 7%14% 14%6% 6%0%2%4%6%8%10%12%14%16%18%20%Blogs, SEO Cost Marketers Time But Not MoneyMarketers spend 55% more time than budget on bloggingTime AllocationBudget Allocation2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 150#SOIM

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Is the Effort Worth It?To further prove the case for inbound, we dug into this data to determine which personnelallocations produce the most bang for a marketer’s buckThe chart below reviews full-time staffing practices compared with budget allocations and averagelead generation costs. As you can see, social media, email marketing, and SEO all generate belowaverage costs per lead, but they require less time than other lead sources. Similarly, bloggingaccounts for just 9% of companies’ overall time, but it produces low-cost leads for 24% of themarketing community, a 15% difference.Q: How does your company dedicate its full-time marketers to the following channels?According to our survey, even the most time-intensive inbound strategy, social media, requires just10% more effort on average than most traditional marketing roles, which run at about 6% of all full-time staffing assignments. Given the fact that inbound marketing is proven to bring in double theleads, this is time well spent.Similarly, in the Chapter Four Appendix you can see the results of charting marketers’ overall timeallocations against their average sales conversions. SEO wins this analysis. While SEO consumesan average 9% of marketers’ overall time, its leads convert to sales at an industry-leading 15%,which is 50% better than trade shows, the leading traditional marketing channel.16%11%9% 9%6% 6% 6%5%4%27% 27%24%25%15%12% 12% 12%16%0%5%10%15%20%25%30%Inbound Strategies Show Positive CPL vs. EﬀortInbound, social media, SEO require eﬀort, but generate low CPLsTime AllocationBelow-Average CPL2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 151#SOIM

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As inbound marketing evolves, so too will the tools marketers use to execute their daily activities.These advancements will make inbound marketing even more efficient at driving leads. As we sawin the technology section in Chapter Three, most marketers are currently cobbling together theirinbound analytics using free Google tools and some other combination of email and social mediaoutreach, which can be incredibly time-intensive to manage.In a recent 2013 HubSpot customer ROI survey, we asked 236 current HubSpot customers abouttheir time allocations using inbound versus outbound marketing before and after incorporatinginbound software.As you can see in the chart below, marketing teams that implemented inbound marketing softwareaverage just between 5 and 20 hours per week executing inbound tactics. This is hardly anoverwhelming commitment, despite some industry naysayers’ perception that inbound requiresexhaustive effort to achieve results.Q: How much time per week do you spend on inbound marketing? (Segmented by date ofHubSpot software purchase)29%42%11%5%3%0%2%7%1%18%25%29%13%4%7%2%0%5%10%15%20%25%30%35%40%45%0 1-5 5-10 10-20 20-30 30-40 40+ NotSureAccess to Technology Increases Inbound MarketingActivitiesMarketers implementing HubSpot software average 5-20 hoursexecuting inbound weeklyInbound Before HubSpotInbound After HubSpot2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 152#SOIM

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With this relatively minimal output, as we showed in Chapter Two, HubSpot customers alsosimultaneously increase both their site traffic and overall lead generation efforts, often atexponential levels. As inbound tools become more widespread and cost-effective, we will seemarketers use them to work smarter, not harder, which will free up even more time for marketersto execute campaigns.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 153#SOIM

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3. Who is hiring? Inbound marketing team growth in 2013As we mentioned in the first part of this chapter, the lagging economy has taken a significant tollon marketing staffs over the past several years. Most marketing teams are making due with of fiveor fewer members at the outset of 2013.As we watch the economy turn and budgets for inbound marketing grow, we wanted to find out ifCMOs and other hiring managers were going to similarly increase their bench strength this year, sowe asked marketers how many full-time marketers their companies plan to hire this year.We discovered that we are about to be in a hiring boom. While most marketing teams are startingout with five or fewer people this year, most will at least double by the end of the year. Onaverage, marketers plan to hire 4.5 team members in 2013.Q: How many full time marketers does your company plan to hire this year?It’s a very good time to have the term “inbound marketer” on your résumé because companiesexecuting inbound strategies plan to hire an average 9.3 staff members this year, more than twicethe levels of those not implementing inbound. Clearly, marketers are learning about the effort ittakes to do inbound well and are boosting both their budget outlays and hiring goalscorrespondingly.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 154#SOIM

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Q: How many full-time marketers does your company plan to hire this year?Enterprise companies are on a similar inbound marketer gold rush this year, reporting plans to hirean average of 18.6 full-time marketers. This may seem like a lot, particularly in light of the averageof 2.5 marketers medium-sized firms are looking to add, but remember, large companies are nowoperating with comparatively minute teams, and this double-digit staffing increase should raiseteams to a more reasonable size.Remember: Your marketing team needs both the bandwidth and expertise to deliver the right kindof leads your business needs to support its growth goals.At HubSpot, we are currently hiring approximately 30 people per month, including a number ofmarketers and content creators. While we have a relatively large marketing team – as ofpublication, we have just fewer than 50 total teammates – we need this impressive bench strengthto support our company growth goals. We also deliver nearly 80,000 leads per month, whichjustified this headcount.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 155#SOIM

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Chapter 4 Appendix1. Who should be on your team? 2013 full-time inbound staffingQ: How many full time marketers does your company have?23% 23%21%18%13%0%5%10%15%20%25%Reaching the rightaudienceConverting leads tocustomersIncreasing totallead volumeCreating qualitycontentProving the ROI ofour marketingactivitiesInternational Marketers Similarly Focused onAudience, Lead ConversionReaching the right audience and converting customers are top globalpriorities in 20132013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 156#SOIM

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Q3. In which country is your company primarily based?44%7%5%4%3%2%2%2% 2%U.S. Remains the Front-runner of InboundMarketing AdoptionU.S.-based companies comprise 63% of survey respondentsUnited StatesIndiaUnited KingdomCanadaSpainItalyAustraliaGermanyFrance2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 161#SOIM

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Q5: What industry best describes your company?4%8%3%3%15%1%10%11%5%2%8%2%12%2%14%Inbound Marketing Touches Nearly Every MajorIndustrySurvey shows a broad mix of business types, lead by agenciesBanking/Insurance/FinancialServicesCommunications/MediaHealthcare/PharmaceuticalManufacturingMarketing AgencyMining/Construction/EnergyNonproﬁt/EducationProfessional Services/ConsultingPR/Communications/Media2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 163#SOIM

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2. Survey methodologyHubSpot fielded our 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Survey between January 31 andFebruary 14, 2013. The query took the form of an online survey, to which there were 3,339qualified complete and partial responses from marketing and business professionals in 128countries on six continents, including North America, Europe, Asia/Pacific, Australia,South/Central America, and Africa.Survey respondents included business owners, marketing practitioners, marketing managers,marketing directors, CEOs, CMOs, and agency sales and IT professionals from a variety ofindustry sectors, including technology (software and hardware), professionalservices/consulting, marketing agencies, nonprofit/education, communications/media, retailand consumer goods, manufacturing, real estate, transportation/auto/travel, healthcare andpharmaceuticals, mining and construction, and banking/insurance/finance.The sampling method was an incentivized, non-probability, voluntary sample composed ofHubSpot prospects having expressed the willingness via opt-in to receive marketing-relatedemail messages; those responding to invitations via social media promotion on LinkedIn,Facebook, and Twitter; and paid media outreach, including LinkedIn Group promotion andother paid email sends. As the goal of this survey was to assess the market saturation level ofinbound marketing tactics (which are often decoupled from the larger framework), we did notexclude any responses, including those who indicated they did not implement inboundmarketing strategies specifically.The incentive for participating in the survey was entry into a contest to win wither a free iPad or$500, as well as a free 55-page report, Marketing Benchmarks from 7000+ Businesses, whichwas made available for download upon completion of the survey.To request further information about the design or conduct of this survey-based study, pleasecontact Meghan Lockwood at research@hubspot.com.2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report 164#SOIM